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Love's pllgrlmage a novel by) Upton Sine

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LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

BY UPTON SINCLAIR

LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

THE FASTING CURE

KING MIDAS

PRINCE HAGEN

THE JOURNAL OF ARTHUR STIRLING

MANASSAS

THE OVERMAN

THE JUNGLE

THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC

THE METROPOLIS

THE MONEYCHANGERS

SAMUEL THE SEEKER

at all bookshops

LOVE'S
PILGRIMAGE

A NOVEI.

Upton Sinclair

®

MITCHELLKENNERLEY

NEW YORK AND LONDON

Copyright igil by Mitchell Kennerley

To those who throughout the world
are fighting for the emancipation of
woman I dedicate this woman's book.

CONTENTS
PART I

Loves Entanglement

Book I The Victim 1

Book II The Snare %Q

Book III The Victim Hesitates 81

Book IV The Victim Approaches 185

Book V The Bait is Seized 167

Book VI The Cords are Tightened 199

Book VII The Capture is Completed 253

PART II

Loves Captivity

Book VIII

The Captive Bound

287

Book IX

The Captive in Leash

825

Book-X

The End of the Tethek

359

Book XI

The Torture-House

395

Book XII

The Treadmill

441

Book XIII

The Masters of the Snare

501

Book XIV

The Price op Ransom

511

Book XV

The Captive Faints

58S

Book XVI

The Break for Freedom

613

LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

PART I

Loves Entanglement

Book I
THE VICTIM

It was in a little woodland glen, with a streamlet
tumbling through it. She sat with her back to a snowy
birch-tree, gazing into the eddies of a pool below; and
he lay beside her, upon the soft, mossy ground, reading
out of a booh of poems. Images of joy were passing
before them; and there came four lines with a picture —

"Hard by, a cottage-chimrtey smokes.
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met.
Are at their savory dinner set."

"Ah!" said she. "I always loved that. Let us be
Corydon and Thyrsis!"

He smiled. "They were both of them men," he said.

"Let us change it," she responded- — "just between
ourselves!"

"Very well — Corydon!" said he.

Then, after a moment's thought, she added, "But we
didn't have the cottage."

"No," said he — "nor even the dinner!"

§ 1. It was the Highway of Lost Men.

They shivered, and drew their shoulders together as
they walked, for it was night, and a cold, sleety rain was
falling. The lights from saloons and pawn-shops fell
upon their faces — faces haggard and gaunt with
misery, or bloated with disease and sin. Some stared
before them fixedly ; some gazed about with furtive and
hungry eyes as they shuffled on. Here and there a police-
man stood in the shelter, swinging his club and watch-
ing them as they passed. Music called to them from
dives and dance-halls, and lighted signs and flaring-
colored pictures tempted them in the entrances of cheap
museums and theatres ; they lingered before these, glad
of even a moment's shelter. Overhead the elevated
trains pounded by ; and from the windows one could see
men crowded about the stoves in the rooms of lodging-
houses, where the steam from their garments made a
blur in the air.

Down this highway walked a lad, about fifteen years
of age, pale of face, and with delicate and sensitive fea-
tures. His overcoat was buttoned tightly about his
neck, and his hands thrust into his pockets ; he gazed
around him swiftly as he walked. He came to this place
every now and then, but he never grew used to what he
saw.

He eyed the men who passed him ; and when he came
to a saloon he would push open the door and gaze about.
Sometimes he would enter, and hurry through, to peer
into the compartments in the back; and then go out
again, giving a wide berth to the drinkers, and shrink-

3

4 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

ing from their glances. Once a girl appeared in a door-
way, and smiled and nodded to him; he started and
hurried out, shuddering. Her wanton black eyes haunted
him, hinting unimaginable things.

Then, on a corner, he stopped and spoke to a police-
man. "Hello !" said the man, and shook his head — "No,
not this time." So the boy went on ; there were several
miles of this Highway, and each block of it the same.

At last, in a dingy bar-room, with saw-dust strewn
upon the floor, and the odor of stale beer and tobacco-
smoke in the air— here suddenly the boy sprang for-
ward, with a cry : "Father !" And a man who sat with
bowed head in a corner gave a start, and lifted a white
face and stared at him. He rose unsteadily to his feet,
and staggered to the other, and fell upon his shoulder,
sobbing, "My son ! My son !"

How many times had Thyrsis heard those words — ^in
how many hours of anguish ! They sank into the deeps
of him, waking echoes like the clang of a bell: they
voiced all the terror and grief of defeated life — "My
son ! My son !"

The man clung to him, weeping, and pouring out the
flood of his shame. "I have fallen again — I am lost —
I am lost!"

The occupants of the place were watching the scene
with dull curiosity; and the boy was trembling like a
wild deer trapped.

"Yes, father, yes ! Let us go home."

"Home — home, my son.? Will ypu take me home.-'
Oh, I couldn't bear to go !"

"But you must come home."

"Do you mean that you still love me, son ?"

"Yes, father, I still love you. I want to try to help
you. Come with me."

THE VICTIM 6

Then the boy would gaze about and ask, "Where is
your hat?"

"Hat, my son? I don't know. I have lost it." The
boy would see his torn and mud-stained clothing, and
the poor old pitiful face, with the eyes blood-shot and
swollen, and the skin, that had been rosy, and was now a
ghastly, ashen gray. He would choke back his feelings,
and grip his hands to keep himself together.

"Come, father, take my hat, and let us go."

"No, my son. I don't need any hat. Nothing can
hurt me — I am lost! Lost!"

So they would go out, arm in arm; and while they
made their progress up the Highway, the man would
pour out his remorse, and tell the story of his weeks of
horror.

Then, after a mile or so, he would halt.

"My son!"

"What is it, father?"

"I must stop here, son."

"Why, father?"

"I must have something to drink."

'Wo, father!"

"But, my boy, I can't go on! I can't walk! You
don't know what I'm suffering!"

"No, father!"

"I've got the money left — I'm not asking you. I'll
come right with you — on my word of honor I wiU !"

And so they would fight it outfall the way back to
the lodging-house where they lived, and where the mother
sat and wept. And here they would put him to bed, and
lock up his clothing to keep him in ; and here, with drugs
and mineral-waters, and perhaps a doctor to help, they
would struggle with him, and tend him until he was on
his feet again. Then, with clothing newly-brushed and

6 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

face newly-shaven he would go back to the world of men ;
and the boy would go back to his dreams.

§ 2. Such was the life of Thyrsis, from earliest
childhood to maturity. His father's was a heritage of
gentle breeding and high traditions — his forefathers
were cavaliers, and had served the State. And now it
had come to this — to hall bedrooms in lodging-houses,
and a life-and-death grapple with destruction ! And
when Thyrsis came to study the problem, he found that
it was a struggle without hope; his father was a man
in a trap.

He was what people called a "drummer". He was de-
pendent for his living upon the favor of certain mer-
chants— men for the most part of low ideals, who came
to the city in search of their low pleasures. One met
them by waiting about in the lobbies of hotels, and in
the bar-rooms which they frequented; and always the
first sign of fellowship with them was to have a drink.
And this was the field on which the battle had to be
fought !

He would hold out for months — half a year, perhaps
— drinking lemonade and putting up with their raillery.
And then he would begin with ginger-ale; and then it
would come to beer ; and then to whiskey. He was al-
ways devising new plans to control himself ; always per-
suading himself that he had solved the problem. He
would not drink in the morning ; he would not drink until
after dinner ; he would not drink alone — and so on with-
out end. His whole life was drink, and all his thoughts
were of drink — the odor of it always in his nostrils, the
image of it always before his eyes.

And the grimness of his fate lay here — that it was by
his best qualities that he was betrayed. If he had been

THE VICTIM 7

hard and mercenary, like some of those who preyed upon
him, there might have been hope. But he was generous
and free-hearted, a slave to his impulses of friendship.
And this was what made the struggle such a cruel one
to Thyrsis; it was like the sight of some noble animal
basely snared.

From his earliest days the boy had watched these
forces working themselves out. The gentleman and the
"drummer" fought for supremacy, and step by step the
soul of the man was fashioned to the work he did. To
succeed with his customers he must share their ideas and
their tastes ; and so he was bitter against reformers, who
interfered with the gaieties of the city, with no consider-
ation for the tastes of "buyers." But then, on the other
hand, would come a time of renunciation, when he would
be all enthusiasm for temperance.

He was full of old-fashioned ideas, which would take
the quaintest turns of reactionism; his politics were
summed up in the phrase that he "would rather vote for
a nigger than a Repubhcan" ; but then, in the same
breath, he would announce some fine and noble sentiment,
out of the traditions of a forgotten past. He was the
soul of courtesy to women, and of loyalty to friends.
He worshipped General Lee and the old time "Virginia
gentleman" ; and those with whom he hved, and for whose
unclean profits he sold himself, never guessed the depths
of his contempt for all they stood for. They had the
dollars, they were on top ; but some day the nemesis of
Good-breeding would smite them — the army of the
ghosts of Gentility would rise, and with "Marse Robert"
and "Jeb" Stuart at their head, would sweep away the
hordes of commercialdom.

Thyrsis saw a great deal of this forgotten chivalry.
His nursery had been haunted by such musty phantoifls ;

8 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and when he first came to the Northern city, he stayed
at a hotel which was frequented by people who lived in
this past — old ladies who were proud and prim, and old
gentlemen who were quixotic and humorous, young ladies
who were "belles," and young gentlemen who aspired
to be "blades". It was a world that would have made
happy the soul of any writer of romances ; but to Thyr-
sis in earliest childhood the fates had given the gift of
seeing beneath the shams of things, and to him this dead
Aristocracy cried out loudly for burial. There was an
incredible amount of drunkenness, and of debauchery
scarcely hidden; there was pretense strutting like a
peacock, and avarice skulking like a hound ; there were
jealousy, and base snobbery, and raging spite, and a
breath of suspicion and scandal hanging like a poison-
ous cloud over everything. These people came and went,
an endless procession of them ; they laughed and danced
and gossiped and drank their way through the boy's life,
and unconsciously he judged them, and hated them and
feared them. It was not by such that his destiny was to
be shaped.

Most of them were poor ; not an honest poverty, but
a sham and artificial poverty — the inability to dress as
others did, and to lose money at "bridge" and "poker",
and to pay the costs of their self-indulgences. As for
Thyrsis and his parents, they always paid what they
owed ; but they were not always able to pay it when they
owed it, and they suflfered all the agonies and humilia-
tions of those who did not pay at all. There was
scarcely ever a week when this canker of want did not
gnaw at them ; their life was one endless and sordid
struggle to make last year's clothing look like new,
and to find some boarding-house that was cheaper and
yet respectable. There was endless wrangling and strife

THE VICTIM 9

and worry over money; and every year the task was
harder, the standards lower, the case more hopeless.

There were rich relatives, a world of real luxury up
above — the thing that called itself "Society". And
Thyrsis was a student and a bright lad, and he was
welcome there; he might have spread his wings and
flown away from this sordidness. But duty held him,
and love and memory held him still tighter. For his
father worshipped him, and craved his help ; to the last
hour of his dreadful battle, he fought to keep his son's
regard — ^he prayed for it, with tears in his eyes and
anguish in his voice. And so the boy had to stand by.
And that meant that he grew up in a torture-house,
he drank a cup of poison to its bitter dregs. To others
his father was merely a gross little man, with sordid
ideas and low tastes ; but to Thyrsis he was a man with
the terror of the hunted creatures in his soul, and the
furies of madness cracking their whips about his ears.

There was only one ending possible — it worked itselt
out with the remorseless precision of a machine. The
soul that fought was smothered and stifled, its voice
grew fainter and feebler ; the agony and the shame grew
hotter, the suffering more cruel, the despair more black.
Until at last they found him in a delirium, and took him
to a private hospital; and thither went Thyrsis, now
grown to be a man, and sat in a dingy reception-room,
and a dingy doctor came to him and said, "Do you
wish to see the body?" And Thyrsis answered, in a
low voice, "No."

§ 3. So it was that the soul of this lad had grown
sombre, and taken to brooding upon the mysteries of
fate. Life was no jest and no holiday, it was no place
for shams and self-deceptions. It was a place where

10 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

cruel enemies set traps for the unwary; a field where
blind and merciless forces ranged, unhindered by man
or God.

Thyrsis could not have told how soon in life this
sense had come to him. In his earliest childhood he
had known that his father was preyed upon, just as
certainly as any wild thing in the forest. At first the
enemies had been saloon-keepers, and wicked men who
tempted him to drink with them. The names of these
men were household words to him, portents of terror;
they peopled his imagination as epic figures, such as
Black Douglas must have been to the children of the
Northern Border.

But then, with widening intelligence, it became cer-
tain social forces, at first dimly apprehended. It was
the god of "business" — before which all things fair
and noble went down. It was "business" that kept vice
triumphant in the city; it was because of "business"
that the saloons could not be closed even on Sunday,
so that the father might be at home one day in seven.
And was it not in search of "business" that he was driven
forth to loaf in hotel-lobbies and bar-rooms.''

Who was to blame for this, Thyrsis did not know;
but certain men made profit of it — and these, too, were
ignoble men. He knew this ; for now and then his
father's employers would honor the little family with
some kind of an invitation, and they would have to
swallow their pride and go. So Thyrsis grew up, with
the sense of a great evil loose in the world ; a wrong,
of which the world did not know. And within him grew
a passionate longing to cry aloud to others, to open
their eyes to this truth!

Outwardly he was like other boys, eager and cheerful,
even boisterous ; but within was this hidden thing, which

THE VICTIM 11

brooded and questioned. Life had made him into an
ascetic. He must be stern, even merciless, with him-
self— because of the fear that was in him, and in his
mother as well. The fear that self-indulgence might
lay its grisly paws upon him! The fear that he, too,
might fall into the trap !

It was not merely that he never touched stimulants ;
he had an instinct against all things that were soften-
ing and enervating, all things that tempted and en-
slaved. For him was the morning-air, and the shock
of cold water, and the hardness of the wild things of
the open. Other people did not feel this way ; other
people pampered themselves and defiled themselves —
and so Thyrsis went apart. He lived quite alone with
his thoughts, he had never a chum, scarcely even any
friends. Where in the long procession of lodging and
boarding-houses and summer-resorts should he meet
people who knew what he knew about life.? Where in
all the world should he meet them, save in the books of
great men in times past.?

There was not much of what is called "culture" in
his family ; no music at all, and no poetry. But
there were novels, and there were libraries where one
could get more of these, so Thyrsis became a devourer
of stories ; he would disappear, and they would find him
at meal-times, hidden in a clump of bushes, or in a
corner behind a sofa — anywhere out of the world.
He read whole libraries of adventure: Mayne-Reid and
Henty, and then Cooper and Stevenson and Scott. And
, then came more serious novels— "Don Quixote" and
"Les Miserables," George Eliot, whom he loved, and
Dickens, whose social protest thrilled him ; and chief est
of all Thackeray, who moulded his thought. Thackeray
knew the world that he knew, Thackeray saw to the

12 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

heart of it; and no high-souled lad who had read him
and worshipped him was ever after to be lured by the
glamor of the "great" world — a world whose greatness
was based upon selfishness and greed.

Thyrsis knew no foreign language, and fate or in-
stinct kept him from those writers who jested with un-
cleanness ; so he was virginal, and pure in all his
imaginings. Other lads exchanged confidences in for-
bidden things, they broke down the barriers and tore
away the veils ; but Thyrsis had never breathed a word
about matters of sex to any living creature. He pon-
dered and guessed, but no one knew his thoughts; and
this was a crucial thing, the secret of much of his
aloofness.

§ 4. In one of the early boarding-houses there had
been a little girl, and the families had become intimate.
But the two children disliked each other, and kept apart
all they could. Thyrsis was domineering and imperious,
and things must always be his way. He was given to
rebellion, whereas Corydon was gentle and meek, and
submitted to confinements and prohibitions in a quite
disgraceful manner. She was a pretty little girl, with
great black eyes ; and because she was silent and shy,
he set her down as "stupid", and went his way.

They spent a summer in the country together, where
Thyrsis possessed himself of a sling-shot, and took to
collecting the skins of squirrels and chipmunks. Cory-
don was horrified at this-; and by way of helping her
to overcome her squeamishness he would make her carry
home the bleeding corpses. He took to raising, young
birds, also, and soon had quite an aviary — two robins,
and a crow, and a survivor from a brood of "cherry-
birds." The feeding of these nestlings was no small

THE VICTIM 13

cask, but Thyrsis went fishing when the spirit moved
him, secure in the certainty that the calls of the hungry
creatures would keep Corydon at home.

This was the way of it, until Corydon began to
blossom into a young lady, beautiful and tenderly-
fashioned. Thyrsis stiU saw her now and then, and he
made attempts to share his higher joys with her. He
had become a lover of poetry ; once they walked by the
seashore, and he read her "Alexander's Feast", thrilling
with delight in its resounding phrases:

"Break his bands of sleep asunder.
And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder !"

But Corydon had never heard of Timotheus, and she
had not been taught to exploit her emotions. She could
only say that she did not understand it very well.

And then, on another occasion, Thyrsis endeavored
to tell her about Berkeley, whom he had been reading.
But Corydon did not take to the sensational philosophy
either ; she would come back again and again to the
evasion of old Dr. Johnson — "When I kick a stone, I
know the stone is there!"

This girl was like a beautiful flower, Thyrsis told
himself — like all the flowers that had gone before her,
and all those that would come after, from generation
to generation. She fitted so perfectly into her environ-
ment, she grew so calmly and serenely ; she wore pretty
(Jresses, and helped to serve tea, and was graceful and
sweet — and with never an idea that there was anything
in life beyond these things. So Thyrsis pondered as
he went his way, complacent over his own perspicacity ;
and got not even a whiff of smoke from the volcano of

14 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

rebellion and misery that was seething deep down in
her soul!

The choosers of the unborn souls had played a strange
fantasy here; they had stolen one of the daughters of
ancient Greece, and set her down in this metropolis of
commercialdom. For Corydon might have been Nau-
sikaa herself; she might have marched in the Pan-
athenaic procession, with one of the sacred vessels in her
hands ; she might have run in the Attic games, bare-
limbed and fearless. Hers was a soul that leaped to
the call of joy, that thrilled at the faintest touch of
beauty. Above all else, she was born for music — she
could have sung so that the world would have remem-
bered it. And she was pent in a dingy boarding-house,
with no point of contact with anything about her — with
no human soul to whom she could whisper her despair !

They sent her to a public-school, where the sad-eyed
drudges of the traders came to be drilled for their
tasks. They harrowed her with arithmetic and gram-
mar, which she abhorred; they taught her patriotic
songs, about a country to which she did not belong.
And also, they sent her to Sunday-school, which was
worse yet. She had the strangest, instinctive hatred
of their religion, with all that it stood for. The sight
of a clergyman with his vestments and his benedictions
would make her fairly bristle with hostility. They
talked to her about her sins, and she did not know what
they meant; they pried into the state of her soul, and
she shrunk from them as if they had been hairy spiders.
Here, too, they taught her to sing — droning hymns
that were a mockery of all the joys of life.

So Corydon devoured her own heart in secret; and
in time a dreadful thing came to happen — the stagnant
soul beginning to fester. One day the girl, whose heart

THE VICTIM 15

was the quintessence of all innocence, happened to see
a low word scribbled upon a fence. And now — ^they had
urged her to discover sins, and she discovered them. Sup-
pose that word were to stay in her mind and haunt her —
suppose that she were not able to forget it, try as she
would! And of course she tried; and the more she
tried, the less she succeeded ; and so came the discovery
that she was a lost soul and a creature of depravity!
The thought occurred to her, that she might go on to
think of other words, and to think of images and ac-
tions as well; she might be unable to forget any of
them — ^her mind might become a storehouse of such
horrors ! And so the maiden out of ancient Greece
would lie awake all night and wrestle with fiends, until
she was bathed in a perspiration.

§ 5. About this time Thyrsis was making his debut
as an author. He had discovered a curious knack in
himself, a turn for making verses of a sort which were
pleasing to children. They came from some little corner
of his consciousness, he scarcely knew how; but there
was a paper that was willing to buy them, and to pay
him the princely sum of five dollars a week ! This would
pay for his food and his hall bedroom, or for board
at some farm in the summer ; and so for several years
Thyrsis was free.

He told a falsehood about his age, and entered col-
lege, and buried himself up to the eyes in work. This
was a college in a city, and a poor college, where the
students all lived at home, and had nothing to do but
study ; and so Thyrsis missed all that beneficent illumina-
tion known as "student-life." He never hurrahed at
foot-ball contests, nor did he dress himself in honorific
garments, nor stupify himself at "smokers." Being

16 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

democratic, and without thought of setting himself up
over others, he was unaware of his greatest opportuni-
ties, and when they invited him into a fraternity, he
declined. Once or twice he found himself roaming the
streets at night with a crowd of students, emitting
barbaric screechings ; but this made him feel silly, and
so he lagged behind and went home.

The college served its purpose, in introducing him
to the world of knowledge ; but that did not take long,
and afterwards it was all in his way. The mathematics
were a discipline, and in them he rejoiced as a strong
man to run a race ; and this was true also of the sci-
ences, and of history — the only trouble was that he
would finish the text-books in the first few weeks, and
after that there was nothing to do save to compose
verses in class, and to make sketches of the professors.
But as for the "languages" and the "literatures" they
taught him — in the end Thyrsis came to forgive them,
because he saw that they did not know what languages
and literatures were. On this account he took to beg-
ging leave of absence on grounds of his poverty; and
then he would go home and spend his days and nights
in learning.

One could get so much for so little, in this wonderful
world of mind! For eight cents he picked up a paper
volume of Emerson's "Essays" ; and in this shrewd and
practical nobility was so much that he was seeking in
life! And then he stumbled upon a fifteen-cent edition
of "Sartor Resartus", and took that home and read it.
It was like the clash of trumpets and cymbals to him;
it made his whole being leap. Hour after hour he read,
breathless, like a man bewitched, the whole night
through. He would cry aloud with delight, or drop the
book and pound his knee and laugh over the demoniac

THE VICTIM 17

power o'f it. The next day he began the "French Revo-
lution"; and after that, alas, he found there was no
more — for Carlyle had turned his back upon democracy,
and so Thyrsis turned his back upon Carlyle.

For this was one of the forces which had had to do
with the shaping of his thought. Beginning in the
public-schools he had learned about his country — the
coimtry which was his, if not Corydon's. He had read
in its history — Irving's "Life of Washington," and ten
great volumes about Lincoln ; so he had come to under-
stand that salvation is of the people, and that those
things which the people do not do — those things have
not yet been done. So no one could deceive him, or
lead him astray; he might laugh with the Tories, and
even love them for their foibles — quaint old Samuel
Johnson, for instance, because he was poor and sturdy,
and had stood by his trade of bookman ; but at bottom
Thyrsis knew that all these men were gilding a corpse.
Wordsworth and Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne
— ^he followed each one as far as their revolutionary im-
pulse lasted ; and after that there was no more in them
for him. Even Ruskin, who taught him the possibilities
of English prose, and opened his eyes to the form and
color of the world of nature — even Ruskin he gave up,
because he was a philanthropist and not a democrat.

Thyrsis had been brought up as a devout Episco-
palian. They had dressed him in scarlet and white to
carry the train of the bishop at confirmation, and had
sent him to an afternoon service every day through-
out Lent. Early in life he had stumbled on a paper
copy of Paine's "Age of Reason," and he read it with
horror, and then conducted a private auto da fS. But
the questions of the book stayed with him, and as years
passed they clamored more loudly. What would have

18 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

happened, astronomically, if the sun had stood still?
And how many different species would have had to go
into the ark? And what was the size of a whale's
gullet, and the probable digestive powers of a whale's
stomach ?

And then came more fundamental difficulties. Could
there, after all, be such a duty as faith in any intel-
lectual matter? Could there be any revelation superior
to reason — ^must not reason have once decided that it
was a revelation, or was not? And what of all the
other "revelations", which all the other peoples of the
world accepted? And then again, if Jesus had been
God, could he really have been tempted? To be God
and man at the same time — did that not mean both to
know and not to know? And was there any way
conceivable for anything to be God, in which everything
else was not God?

These perplexities and many others the boy took to
his clerical adviser, a man who loved him dearly, and
who gave him some volumes of the "Bampton lectures"
to read. Here was the defense of Christianity, con-
ducted by authorities, and with scholarship and dig-
nity; and Thyrsis found to his dismay that the only
convincing parts of their books were where they gave
a resume of the arguments of their opponents. He
learned in this way many difficulties that had not yet
occurred to him; and when he had got through with
the reading his mind was made up. If any man were
to be damned for not believing such things, then it was
his duty as a thinker to be damned; and so he bade
farewell to the Church — something which was sad, in
a way, for his mother had been planning him for a
bishop !

THE VICTIM 19

§ 6. But Thyrsis was throwing away many chances
these days. He went into the higher regions to spend
his Christmas holidays ; and instead of being tactful
and agreeable, he buried himself in a corner of the
library all day long. For Thyrsis had made the
greatest discovery yet — ^he had found out Shakespeare !
At school they had taught him "English" by means of
"to be or not to be", and they had sought to trap him
at examinations by means of "man's first disobedience
and the fruit"; and so for years they had held him
back from the two great glories of our literature.
But now, by accident, he stumbled into "The Tempest" ;
and after that he read every line of the plays in two
weeks.

He lost his soul in that wonderland; he walked and
thought no more like the men of earth — ^he dwelt with
those lords and princes of the soul, and learned to speak
their language. He would dodge among cable-cars
and trucks with their heavenly melodies in his ears ; and
while he sung them his eyes flashed and his heart beat
fast:

"Good night, sweet prince.
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest !"

There were a few days left in those wondrous holi-
days; and these went to Milton. There was a set of
his works, enormously expensive, which had been made
and purchased with no idea that any human being would
ever read them. But Thyrsis read them, and so all
the beauty of the binding was justified. For hours,
and hours upon hours, he drank in that thunderous
music, crying it aloud with his hands clenched tightly,
and stopping to laugh like a child with excitement:

20 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"Th' imperial ensign, which full high advanced.
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind,
With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed,
Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds!"

And afterwards, when he came to the palace that
"rose like an exhalation", all of Thyrsis' soul rose
with it. One summer's day he stood on a high moun-
tain with a railroad in the valley, and saw a great
freight-engine stop still and pour out its masses of
dense black smoke. It rose in the breathless air,
straight as a column, high and majestic; and Thyrsis
thought of that line. It carried him out into the
heavens, and he knew that a flash of poetry such as
that is the meeting of man's groping hand with God's.

It was about here that a strange adventure came to
him. It was midwinter, and he went out, long after
midnight, to walk in a beautiful garden. A dry
powdery snow crunched beneath his feet, and overhead
the stars gleamed and quivered, so bright that he felt
like stretching out his hands to them. The world lay
still, and awful in its beauty ; and here suddenly, unsus-
pected— unheralded, and quite unsought — there came
to Thyrsis a strange and portentous experience, the
first of his ecstasies.

He could not have told whether he walked or sat
down, whether he spoke or was silent ; he lost all sense
of his own existence — his consciousness was given up to
the people of his dreams, the companions and lovers
of his fancy. The cold and snow were gone, and there
was a moonlit glade in a forest; and thither they came,
one by one, friendly and human, yet in the full panoply
o£ their splendor and grace. There were Shelley and

THE VICTIM 21

Milton, and the gentle and troubled Hamlet, and the
sorrowful knight of la Mancha, with the irrepressible
Falstaff to hearten them all ; a strangely-assorted com-
P*iiy» yet royal spirits all of them, and no strangers
to each other in their own world. And here they
gathered and conversed, each in his own vein and from
his own impulse, with gracious fancy and lofty vision
and heart-easing mirth. And ah, how many miles would
one have travelled to be with them !

That was the burden which this gift laid upon
Thyrsis. He soon discovered that these visions of
wonder came but once, and that when they were gone,
they were gone forever. And he must learn to grapple
with them as they fled, to labor with them and to hold
them fast, at the cost of whatever heartbreaking strain.
Thus alone could men have even the feeblest reflexion
of their beauty — upon which to feed their souls forever
after.

§ 7. These things came at the same time as another
development in Thyrsis' life, likewise portentous and
unexpected. Boyhood was gone, and manhood had
come. There was a bodily change taking place in him
— he became aware of it with a start, and with the
strangest and most uncomfortable thrills. He did not
know what to make of it, or what to do about it; nor
did he know where to turn for advice.

He tried to put it aside, as a thing of no importance.
But it would not be put aside — it was of vast im-
portance. He discovered new desires in himself, im-
pulses that dominated him in a most disturbing way.
He found that he took a new interest in women and
young girls ; he wanted to linger near them, and their
glances caused him strange emotions. He resented

22 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

this, as an invasion of his privacy ; it was inconsistent
with his hermit-instinct. Thyrsis wished no women in
his life save the muses with their star-sewn garments.
He had been fond of a line from a sonnet to Milton:

"Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart."

But instead of this, what awful humiliations ! In
a summer-resort where he found himself, there was a
girl of not very gentle breeding, somewhat pudgy and
with a languishing air. She liked to have boys snuggle
down by her; and so Thyrsis spent the whole of one
evening, sitting in a summer-house with an arm about
her waist, dissolved in a sort of moon-calf sentiment-
alism. And then he passed the rest of the night wander-
ing about in the forest cursing himself, with tears of
shame and vexation in his eyes.

He was so ignorant about these matters that he did
not even know if the changes that had taken place in
him were normal, or whether they were doing him harm.
He made up his mind that he must have advice; as it
was unthinkable that he should speak about such shame-
ful things with any grown person, he bethought him-
self of a classmate in college who was an earnest and
sober man. This friend, much older than Thyrsis, was
the son of an evangelical clergyman, and was headed
for the ministry himself. His name was Warner, and
Thyrsis had helped him in arranging for some religious
meetings at the college. Warner had been shocked by
his theological irregularities ; but they were still friends,
and now Thyrsis sought a chance to exchange confi-
dences with him.

The opportunity came while they were strolling down
an avenue near the college, and a woman passed them.

THE VICTIM 23

a woman with bold and hard features, and obviously-
painted cheeks. She smiled at a group of students just
ahead, and one of them turned and walked off arm in
arm with her.

"Good heavens !" exclaimed Warner. "Did you see
that.?"

"Yes," said Thyrsis. "Who is she?"

"She comes from a house just around the corner."

"But who is she?"

"Why — she's a street-walker."

"A street-walker!"

This brought to Thyrsis' mind a problem that had
been haunting him for a year or two. Always when
he walked about the streets at night there were women
who smiled at him and whispered. And he knew that
these were bad women, and shrunk from them. But
just what did they mean?

"What does she do ?" he asked again.

"Why, don't you know what a street-walker is?"

"Not very well," said Thyrsis.

It took some time for him to get the desired informa-
tion, because the other could not realize the depths of
his ignorance. "They sell themselves to men," he said.

"But what for?" asked Thyrsis. "You don't mean
that they — they let them "

"They have intercourse together. Of course."

Thyrsis was almost dumb with dismay. "But — I
should think they would have children !" he exclaimed.

"Good Lord, man !" laughed the other. "Where do
you keep yourself, anyway?"

But Thyrsis was too much shaken to think of being
ashamed. This was a most appalling revelation to
him — it opened quite a new vista of life's possibilities.

24 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"But why should they do such things?" he cried.

"They earn their hving that way," said the other.

"But why thatwAj?"

"I don't know. They are that kind of women, I
suppose."

And so Warner went on to expound to him the facts
of prostitution, and all the abysses of human depravity
that lie thereabouts. And incidentally the boy got a
chance to ask his questions, and to get a common-sense
view of his perplexities. Also he got some understand-
ing of human nature, and of the world in which he
lived.

Here was Warner, a man of twenty-four, and of a
devout, if somewhat dull and plodding conscientious-
ness ; and the last eight or nine years of his life had
been one torment because of the cravings of lust. He
had never committed an act of unchastity— or at least
he told Thyrsis that he had not. But he was never free
from the impulse, and he had no conception of the possi-
bihty of being free. His desire was a purely brute
one — untouched by any intellectual or spiritual, or even
any sentimental color. He desired woman, as woman —
it mattered not what woman. How low his impulses
took him Thyrsis realized with a shudder from one re-
mark that he made — that his poverty did not help him
to live virtuously, for about the docks and in the
workingmen's quarters there were women who would sell
themselves for fifty cents a night.

This man's whole life was determined by that crav-
ing ; in fact it seemed to Thyrsis that his God had made
the universe with relation to it — a heaven to reward him
if he abstained, and a hell to punish him if he yielded.
It was because of this that he clung to the church, and
shrunk from any dallying with "rationalism". He dis-

THE VICTIM 26

approved of the theatre, because It appealed to these
cravings ; he disapproved of all pictures and statues of
the nude human form, because the sight of them over-
mastered him. For the same reason he shrunk from all
impassioned poetry, and from dancing, and even from
non-religious music. He was rigid in his conformance
to all the social conventions, because they served the
purpose of saving him and his young women-friends
from temptation; and he looked forward to the com-
pletion of a divinity-course as his goal, because then
he would be able to settle down and marry, and so at
last to gratify his desires. He stated this quite baldly,
quoting the authority of St. Paul, that it was "better
to marry than to burn."

This conversation brought Thyrsis to a realization
that there was a great deal in the world that was not
found in the poetry of Tennyson and Longfellow; and
Bo he began to pry into the souls of others of his fel-
low-students.

§ 8. Warner had given him the religious attitude;
-and now he went after the scientific. There was a tall,
eager-faced young man, who proclaimed himself a
disciple of Haeckel and Herbert Spencer, and even went
so far as to quote Schopenhauer in class. Walking
home together one day, these two fell to arguing the
freedom of the will, and the nature of motives and de-
sires, and what power one has over them; and so
Thyrsis made the startling discovery that this young
man, having accepted the doctrine of "determinism,"
had drawn therefrom the corollary that he had to do
what he wanted to do, and so was powerless to resist
his sex-impulses. For the past year this youth, a fine,
intellectual and honest student, had gone at regular

26 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

intervals to visit a prostitute; and with entirely scien-
tific and cold-blooded precision he outlined to Thyrsis
the means he took to avoid contracting disease. Thyrsis
listened, feeling as he might have felt in a slaughter-
house ; and when, returning to the deterministic hy-
pothesis, he asked how it was that he had managed to
escape this "necessity", he was told that it must be be-
cause he was of a weaker and less manly constitution.

And there was yet another type: a man with whom
there was no difficulty in bringing up the subject, for
the reason that he was always bringing it up himself.
Thyrsis sat next to him in a class in Latin, and noticed
that whenever the text contained any hint at matters of
sex — ^which was not infrequent in Juvenal and Horace —
this man would look at him with a grin and a sly wink.
And sometimes Thyrsis would make a casual remark in
conversation, and the man would twist it out of its
meaning, or make a pun out of it — to find some excuse
for his satyr's leer. So at last Thyrsis was moved to
say to him — "Don't you ever realize what a state you've
got your mind into?"

"How do you mean.'"' asked the man.

"Why, everything in the world seems to suggest
obscenity to you. You're always looking for it and
always finding it — you don't seem to care about any-
thing else."

The other was interested In that view of It, and he
acknowledged with mild amusement that it was true;
apparently It was a novelty to him to discuss such
matters seriously. He told Thyrsis that he could not
remember having ever restrained a sexual Impulse In
his life. He thought of lust in connection with every
woman he met, and his mind was a storehouse of smut.
And yet he was not a bad fellow, in other ways; he

THE VICTIM 27

was handsome, and a good deal of an athlete, and was
planning to be a physician. "You'll find most all the
fellows are the same," he said.

Not long after this, Thyrsis was selected to repre-
sent his college on a debating-team, and he went away
to another city and was invited to a fraternity-house ;
and here, suddenly, he discovered how much of "college-
life" he had been missing. This was a fashionable
university, and he met the sons of wealthy parents.
About a score of them lived in this fraternity-house,
without any sort of supervision or restraint. They ate
in a beautiful oak-panelled dining-room adorned with
drinking-steins ; and throughout the meal they treated
their visitor to such an orgy of obscenity as he had
never dreamed of in his life before. Thyrsis was
trapped and could not get away ; and it seemed to him
when he rose from the table that there was nothing
left clean in all God's universe. These boys appeared
to vie with each other in blasphemous abandonment;
and it was not simply wantonness — it was sprawling and
disgusting filthiness. ^

One of this group took Thyrsis driving, and was
led to talk. Here was a youth whose father was the
president of a great manufacturing-enterprise, and
supplied him with unlimited funds ; which money the boy
used to divert himself in the pursuit of young women.
Sometimes he had stooped so low as manicure-girls and
shop-clerks and stenographers ; but for the most part
he sought actresses and chorus-girls — they had more
intelligence and spirit, he explained, they were harder
to win. He had his way with them, partly because he
was handsome and clever, but mainly because he was
the keeper of the keys of opportunity. It was his
to dispense auto-rides and champagne-suppers, and

28 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

flowers and jewels, and all things else that were desir-
able in life.

Thyrsis was appalled at the hardness and the utter
ruthlessness of this man — he saw him as a young
savage turned loose to prey in a civilized community.
He had the most supreme contempt for his victims —
that was what they were made for, and he paid them
their price. Nor was this just because they were
women, it was a matter of class ; the young man had
a mother and sisters, to whom he applied quite other
standards. But Thyrsis found himself wondering how
long, with this contagion raging among the fathers
and the sons, it would be possible to keep the mothers
and the daughters sterilized.

§ 9. These discoveries came one by one ; but Thyrsis
saw enough at the outset to make it clear that the time
had come for him to gird up his loins. The choice
of Hercules was before him ; and he did not intend that
the course of his life was to be decided by these cravings
of the animal within him.

From the grosser sorts of temptation he was always
saved by the fastidiousness of his temperament; the
thought of a woman who sold herself for money could
never bring him anything but shuddering. But all
about his lodging-house lived the daughters of the poor,
and these were a snare for his feet. It seemed to him
as if this craving came to a man in regular pulses ;
he could go for weeks, serene and happy in his work —
and then suddenly would come the restlessness, and he
would go out into the night and wander about the
streets for hours, impelled by a futile yearning for he
knew not what — the hope of something clean in the
midst of uncleanliness, of some adventure that would be

THE VICTIM 29

not quite shameful to a poet's fancy. And then, after
midnight, he would steal home, baffled and sick at heart,
and wet his pillow with hot and bitter tears !

So unbearable to him was the thought of such perils
that he was impelled to seek his old friend the clergy-
man, who had lost him over the ancient Hebre^ my-
thologies, and now won him back by his living moral
force. With much embarrassment and stammering
Thyrsis managed to give a hint of what troubled him;
and the man, whose life was made wholly of love for
others, opened his great heart and took Thyrsis in.

He told him of his own youthful struggle — a struggle
which had resulted in victory, for he had never known a
woman. And he put all the facts before the boy, made
clear to him the all-determining importance of the issue :

"Choose well, your choice is
Brief and yet endless!"

On the one hand was slavery and degradation and
disease; and on the other were all the heights of the
human spirit. For if one saved and stored this mighty
sex-energy, it became transmuted to the gold of intel-
lectual and emotional power. Such was the universal
testimony of the masters of the higher life —

"My strength is as the strength of ten
Because my heart is pure."

And this was no blind asceticism ; it was simply a choos-
ing of the best. It was not a denial of love, but on
the contrary a consecration of love. Some day Thyrsis
would meet the woman he was to cleave to, and he would
expect her to come to him a virgin ; and he must honor

80 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

her as much — he must save the fire and fervor of his
young desire for his life's great consummation.

Such was the ideal; and these two men made a com-
pact between them, that once every month Thyrsis
would write and tell of his success or failure. And this
amateur confessional was a mighty motive to the lad —
he knew that he could never tell a he, and the thought
of telling the truth was like a sword hanging over him.
There were hours of trial, when he stood so close to the
edge of the precipice that this alone was what kept
him clear.

§ 10. The summer had come, and Thyrsis had gone
away to live in a country village, and was reading
Keats and Shelley, and the narrative poems of Scott.
There came a soft warm evening, when all the world
seemed a-dream; and he had been working hard, and
there came to him a yearning for the stars. He went
out, and was strolling through the streets of the village,
when he saw a girl come out of one of the houses. She
was younger than he, graceful of form, and pretty.
The lamp-light flashed on her bright cheeks, and she
smiled at him as she passed. And Thyrsis' heart gave
a great leap, and the blood surged to his face; he
turned and looked, and saw that she was gazing over
her shoulder at him.

He stopped, and turned to foUow, his meditations
all gone, and gone his resolutions. A trembling seized
him, and every nerve of him tingled. He could feel
his heart as if it were underneath his throat.

In a moment more he was beside the girl. "May I
join you?" he asked, and she replied with a nod.

Thyrsis moved beside her and took her arm in his.
A moment later they came to a place where the road

THE VICTIM SI

was dark, and he put his arm about her waist; she
made no resistance.

"I — I've seen you often before," she said.

"Yes," he replied, "I have seen you." And he sud-
denly remembered a remark that he had heard about
her. There was a large summer-hotel in this neighbor-
hood, which as usual had brought all the corruptions
of the city in its train ; and a youth whom Thyrsis had
met there had pointed out the girl with the remark,
"She's a little beast."

And this idea, as It came to him, swept him away
in a fierce tide of madness ; he bent suddenly down and
whispered into her ear. They were words that never
in Thyrsis' life had passed his lips before.

The girl pushed him away; but she laughed.

"You don't mind, do you?" exclaimed Thyrsis, his
heart thumping like a hammer.

"Listen," he whispered, bending towards her. "Let
us go and take a walk. Let us go where no one wiU
see us."

"Where.?" she asked.

"Out into the country," he said.

"Not now," she replied. "Some other time."

"No, now !" exclaimed Thyrsis, desperately. "Now !"

They had been moving slowly; they came to a place
where a great tree hung over the road, shadowing it ;
and there they stopped, as by one impulse.

"Listen to me," he whispered, swiftly. "Listen.
You don't know how anxious I have been to meet you.
It's true — indeed it's true !"

He paused. "Yes," said the girl, "and I have been
wanting to meet you. Didn't you ever see me nod to
you?"

And suddenly Thyrsis put his arms about her, and

32 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

pressed her to him. The touch of her bosom sent the
blood driving through his veins in torrents of fire; he
no longer knew or cared what he said, or what he did.

"Listen to me," he raced on. "Listen to me! No-
body wiU know ! And you are so beautiful, so beautiful !
I love you !" The words burned his lips, but he forced
himself to say them, again and again — "I love you !"

The girl was gazing around her nervously. "Not
now," she exclaimed. "Not to-night. To-morrow I
will meet you, to-morrow night, and go with you."

"No," cried Thyrsis, "not to-morrow night, but
now!" And he clasped her yet more tightly, with aU
his strength. "Listen," he panted, his breath on her
cheek. "I love you! I cannot wait till to-morrow —
I could not bear it. I am aU on fire! I should not
know what to do!"

The girl gazed about her again in uncertainty, and
Thyrsis swept on in his swift, half-incoherent exclama-
tions. He would take no refusal ; for half his madness
was terror of himself, and he knew it. And then sud-
denly, as he cried out to her, the girl whispered, faintly,
"All right!" And his heart gave a throb that hurt
him.

"I'D tell you," she went on, hastily, "I was going to
the store for something, and they expect me home.
But wait here till I get back, and then I'll go with
you."

"You mean it.?" whispered Thyrsis. "You mean it?"

"Yes, yes," she answered.

"And it will be soon.'"'

"Yes, soon."

"AU right," said he. "But first give me a kiss."
As she held up her face, Thyrsis pressed her to him,
and kissed her again and again, until her cheeks were

THE VICTIM 33

aflame. At last he released her, and she turned swiftly
and darted up the street.

§ 11. And after she was gone the boy stood there
motionless, not stirring even a hand. A full minute
passed, and the color went out of his cheeks, and the
fire out of his veins, and he could hardly stand erect.
His head sunk lower arid lower, until suddenly he whis-
pered hoarsely, under his breath, "Oh, my God! Oh,
my God!"

He looked up at the sky, his face ghastly white;
and there came from his throat a low moan, like that
of a wounded animal. Suddenly he turned, and fled
away down the street.

He went on and on, block after block; but then, all
at once, he stopped again and faced about. He gripped
his hands until the nails cut him, and shut his teeth
together like a steel-trap. "No, no !" he muttered. "No
— you coward !"

He turned and began to march, grimly, as a soldier
might; he went back, and stopped on the spot from
which he had come; and there he stood, like a statue.
So one minute passed, then another; and at last a
shadow moved in the distance, and a step came near. It
was the girl.

"Here I am," she whispered, laughing.

"Yes," said Thyrsis. "I have something I must say
to you, please."

She noticed the change in a flash, and she stopped.
"What's the matter.?"

"I don't know just how to tell you," said Thyrsis,
in a low, quivering voice. "I've been a hound, and now
I don't want to be a cad. But I'm sorry for what
we were talking about."

34 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"You mean what you were talking about, don't you?"
demanded the girl, her eyes flashing.

Thyrsis dropped his glance. "Yes," he said. "I am
a cur. I beg your pardon. I am so ashamed of myself
that I don't know what to do. But, oh, I was crazy.
I couldn't help it ! and I — I'm so sorry !" There were
tears in his voice.

"Humph," said the girl, "it's all right."

"No," said Thyrsis, "it's all wrong. It's dreadful
— it's horrible. I don't know what I should have
done "

"Well, you better not do it any more, that's all,"
said she. "I'm sure you needn't worry about me — I'll
take care of myself."

Thyrsis looked at her again ; she was no longer
beautiful. Her face was coarse, and her anger did not
make it any better. His humility made no impression.

"It is so wrong — " he began; but she interrupted
him.

"Preaching won't help it any," she said. "I don't
want to hear it. Good-bye."

So she turned and walked away; and Thyrsis stood
there, white, and shuddering, until at last he started
and strode off. Clear through the town he went, and
out into the black country beyond, seeing nothing,
caring about nothing. He flung himself down by the
roadside, and lay there moaning for hours: "My God,
my God, what shall I do?"

§ 12. It was nearly morning when he came back and
crept upstairs to his room ; and here he sat by the bed-
side, gazing at the haggard face in the glass. At such
times as this he discovered a something in his features
that filled him with shuddering; he discovered it in his

THE VICTIM 35

words, and in the very tone of his voice — the sins of the
fathers were being visited upon the cliildren ! What an
old, old story it was to him — this anguish and remorse !
These ecstasies of resolution that vanished like a cloud-
wrack — these protestations and noble sentiments that
counted for naught in conduct! And his was to be
the whole heritage of impotence and futihty; he, too,
was to struggle and agonize — and to finish with his foot
in the trap!

This idea was like a white-hot goad to him. After
such an experience there would be several months of
toil and penance, and of savage self-immolation. It
was hard to punish a man who had so little ; but Thyrsis
managed to find ways. For several months at a time
he would go without those kinds of food that he liked ;
and instead of going to bed at one o'clock he would
read the New Testament in Greek for an hour. He
would leap out of bed in the morning and plunge into
cold water ; and at night, when he felt a longing upon
him, he would go out and run for hours.

He took to keeping diaries and writing exhortations
to himself. Because he could no longer use the theo-
logical prayers he had been taught, he fashioned new
invocations for himself : prayers to the unknown sources
of his vision, to the new powers of his own soul — "the
undiscovered gods," as he called them. Above all he
prayed to his vision of the maiden who waited the issue
of this battle, and held the crown of victory in her
keeping —

"Somewhere beneath the sun.

Those quivering heart-strings prove it.
Somewhere there must be one
Made for this soul to love it —

36 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Some one whom I could court

With no great change of manner.

Still holding reason's fort,

While waving fancy's banner!"

All of which things made a subtle change in his atti-
tude to Corydon, whom he still met occasionally. Cory-
don was now a young lady, beautiful, even stately,
with an indescribable atmosphere of gentleness and
purity about her. All things unclean shrunk from her
presence ; and so in times of distress he liked to be with
her. He would drop vague hints as to sufferings and
temptations, and told her that she seemed like a "god-
dess" to him.

Corydon received this with some awe, but with more
perplexity. She could not understand why anyone
should struggle so much, or why a youth should take
such a sombre view of things. But she was perfectly
willing to seem like a "goddess" to anyone, and she was
glad if that helped him. She was touched when he
read her a poem of his own, a poem which he held very
precious. He called it

"A song of the young-eyed Cherubim
In the days of the making of man."

And in it he had set forth the view of life that had
come to him —

"The quest of the spirit's gain —
Lured by the graces of pleasure,

And lashed by the furies of pain.

Thy weakness shall sigh for an Eden,

But the sword shall flame at the gate;
For far is the home of thy vision

And strong is the hand of thy fate!"

THE VICTIM 37

§ 13. Though Thyrsis had no time to realize it, it
was in this long and bitter struggle that he won what-
ever power he had in his future life. It was here that
he learned "to hold his will above him as his law", and
to defy the world for the sake of his ideal. And then,
too, this toil was the key that opened to him the
treasure-house of a new art — which was music.

Until he was nearly out of college Thyrsis had
scarcely heard any music at all. Church-hymns he
had learned, and a few songs in school. But now in
poetry and other books he met with references to com-
posers, and to the meaning of great music ; and the
things that were described there were the things he
loved, and he began to feel a great eagerness to get
at them. As a first step he bought a mandolin, and
set to work to teach himself to play, a task at which
he wrought with great diligence. At the same time
a friend had bought a guitar, and the two set to work
to play duets. The first preliminary was the getting
of the instruments in tune; and not knowing that the
mandolin is an octave higher than the guitar, they spent
a great deal of time and broke a great many guitar-
strings.

As the next step, Thyrsis went to hear a great
pianist, and sat perplexed and wondering. There was
a girl next to him who sobbed, and Thyrsis watched her
as he might have watched a house on fire. Only once
the pianist pleased him — when he played a pretty little
piece called somebody's "impromptu", in which he got
a gleam of a "tune." Poor Thyrsis went and got that
piece, and took it home to study it, with the help of
the mandolin; but, alas, in the maze of notes he could
not even find the "tune."

But if he could not understand the music, he could

38 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

read books about it ; he read a whole library — criticism
of music, analysis of music, histories of music, com-
posers of music ; and so gradually he learned the differ-
ence between a sarabande and a symphony, and began
to get some idea of what he went out for to hear. At
first, at the concerts, all he could think of was to crane
his neck and recognize the different instruments; he
heard whole symphonies, while doing nothing but watch-
ing for the "movements," and making sure he hadn't
skipped any. One heartless composer ran two move-
ments into one, and so Thyrsis' concert came out one
piece short at the end, and he sat gazing about him in
consternation when the audience rose to go. After-
wards he read long dissertations about each symphony
before he went, and he would note down the important
points and watch for them. The critic would expatiate
upon "the long-drawn dissonance forte, that marks the
close of the working-out portion" ; and Thyrsis would
watch for that long-drawn dissonance, and be wonder-
ing if it was never coming — ^when suddenly the whole
symphony would come to an end! Or he would read
about a "quaint capering measure led off by the bas-
soons," or a "frantic sweep of the violins over a trom-
bone melody," and he would watch for these events with
eyes and ears alert, and if he found them — eureka!

But such things could not last forever ; for Thyrsis
had a heart full of eagerness and love, and of such
is the soul of music. And just then was a time when
he was sick and worn — ^when it seemed to him that the
burden of his hfe was more than he could bear. He
was haunted by the thought that he would lose his
long battle, that he would go under and go down ; and
then it was that chance took him to a concert which
closed with the great "C-Minor Symphony."

THE VICTIM 39

Thyrsis had read a life of Beethoven, and he knew
that here was one of the hero-souls — a man who had
grappled with the fiends, and passed through the valley
of death. And now he read accounts of this titan
symphony, and learned that it was a battle of the
human spirit with despair. He read Beethoven's words
about the opening theme — "So knocks fate upon the
door!" And a fierce and overwhelming longing pos-
sessed him to get at the soul of that symphony.

He went to the concert, and heard nothing of the
rest of the music, but sat like a man in a dream; and
when the time came for the symphony, he was trembling
with excitement. There was a long silence; and then
suddenly came the first theme — those fearful hammer-
strokes that cannot be thought without a shudder.
They beat upon Thyrsis' very heart-strings, and he sat
appalled; and straight out he went upon the tide of
that mighty music-passion — without knowing it, with-
out knowing how. He forgot that he was trying to
understand a symphony ; he forgot where he was, and
what he was ; he only knew that gigantic phantoms
surged within him, that his soul was a hundred times
itself. He never guessed that an orchestra was play-
ing a second theme; he only knew that he saw a light
gleam out of the storm, that he heard a voice, pitiful,
fearful, beautiful beyond utterance, crying out to the
furies for mercy; and that then the storm closed over
it with a roar. Again and again it rose; Thyrsis did
not know that this was the "working-out portion" that
had forever been his bane. He only knew that it strug-
gled and fought his fight, that it pleaded and sobbed,
and rose higher and higher, and began to rejoice —
and that then came the great black phantom-shape
sweeping over it; and the iron hammer-strokes of Fate

40 LOVE'S PILGRDIAGE

beat down upon it, crushed it and trampled it into
annihilation. Again and again this happened, while
Thyrsis sat clutching the seat, and shaking with wonder
and excitement. Never in his experience had there been
anything so vast, so awful; 't was more than he could
bear, and when the first movement came to an end —
when the soul's last hope was dead — he got up and
rushed out. People who passed him on the streets
must have thought that he was crazy ; and afterwards,
that day * and forever, he lived all his soul's life in
music.

As a result of this Thyrsis paid all his bank-account
for a violin, and went to see a teacher.

"You are too old," the teacher said.

But Thyrsis answered, "I will work as no one ever
worked before."

"We all do that," rephed the other, with a smile.
And so they began.

And so all day long, with fingers raw, and arms and
back shuddering with exhaustion, Thyrsis sat and
practiced, the spirit of Music beckoning him on. It
was in a boarding-house, and there was a nervous old
man in the next room, and in the end Thyrsis had to
move. By the time he went away to the country, he
was able to play a melody in tune; and then he would
take some one that had fascinated him, and practice
it and practice it night and day. He would take his
fiddle every morning at eight and stride out into the
forest, and there he would stay all day with the squir-
rels. They told him once how a new arrival, driving
over in the hotel 'bus at early dawn, had passed an old
Italian woman toiling up a hill and singing for dear
life the "Tannhauser March." It chanced that the new
arrival was a musician, and he leaned out and asked

THE VICTIM 41

the old woman where she had learned it. And this was
her explanation:

"Dey ees a crazy feller in de woods — he play it all
day for tree weeks !"

§ 14. By this time Thyrsis had finished at coUege,
passing comfortably near the bottom of his class, and
had betaken himself to a university as a graduate
student. He was duly registered for a lot of courses,
and spent his time when he should have been at the
lectures, sitting in a vacant class-room reading the
book that had fascinated him last. His note-book be-
gan at that time to show two volumes a day on an
average, and once or twice he stopped at night to
wonder how it had actually been possible for him to
read poetry fourteen hours a day for a whole week and
not be tired.

He taught himself German, and that led to another
great discovery- — he made the acquaintance of Goethe.
The power of that mighty spirit took hold of him, so
that he prayed to him when he was lonely, and kept the
photograph of the young poet in his pocket, to gaze
at it as at a lover. The great eyes came to haunt him
so that one night he awoke crying out, because he had
dreamed he was going to meet Goethe.

In the* catalog of the university there were listed a
number of courses in "rhetoric and English composi-
tion". They were for the purpose of teaching one
how to write, and the catalog set forth convincingly
the methods whereby this was done. Thyrsis wished
to know all there was to know about writing, and so
he enrolled himself for an advanced course, and went
for an hour every day and listened to expositions of
the elements of sentence-structure by Prof. Osborne,

4g LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

author of "American Prose Writers" and "The Science
of Rhetoric". The professor would give him a theme,
and bid him bring in a five-hundred word composition.
Perhaps it was that Thyrsis was lacking in the play-
spirit; at any rate he could not write convincingly on
the subject of "The Duty of the College Man to Sup-
6 port Athletics." He struggled for a month against
his own impotence, and then went to see his instructor.

"I think," he said, "I shall have to drop Course A."

The professor gazed over his spectacles at him.

"Why?"

"I don't think I am getting any good out of it."

"But how can you tell what good you are getting.'"'

"I don't seem to feel that I am," said Thyrsis,
deprecatingly.

"It is not to be supposed that you would feel it,"
said the other — "not at this early stage. You must
wait."

"But I don't like the method, sir."

"What's wrong with the method?"

Thyrsis was embarrassed. He was not sure, he said ;
but he did not think that writing could be taught.
Anyway, one had first to have something worth say-
ing—

"Are you laboring under the delusion that you know
anything about writing?" demanded the professor. (He
had written across Thyrsis' last composition the words,
"Feeble and trivial".)

"Why, no," began the boy.

"Because if you are, let me disabuse your mind at
once. There is no one in the class who knows less
about writing than yourself."

"I think," said Thyrsis, "it's because I can't bring

THE VICTIM 43

myself to write in cold blood. I have to be interested.
I'm sure that is the trouble."

"I'm sure," said the other, "that the trouble Is that
you think you know too much."

"I'm sorry, sir," said Thyrsis, humbly. "I've tried
my best "

"It is my business to teach students to write. I've
given my life to that, and I think I know something
about it. But you think you know more than I do.
That's all."

And so they parted. Thyrsis kept a vivid -recollec-
tion of this interview, for the reason that at a later
stage of his career he came into contact with Prof.
Osborne again, and got another glimpse of the authori-
tarian attitude towards the art of letters.

§ 15. Thyrsis had not many friends at college, and
none at all at the university. He had no time to make
any; and besides, there was a certain facetious senior
who had caught him hurrying through the corridors
one day, declaring in excitement that

"Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow!"

But he had long ago ceased to hope for a friend,
or to care what anybody thought about him; it was
clear to him by this time that he had made himself
into a poet, and was doomed to be unhappy. His
mother had given up all hope of seeing him a bishop,
and they had compromised upon a judgeship ; but here
at the university there was a law-school, and he met
the students, and saw that this, too, could not be.
These "lawyers" were not seeking knowledge for the
love of it — they were studying a trade, by which they

!4 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

:ould rise in the world. They were not going out to
lo battle for truth and justice — they were perfecting
hemselves in cunning, so that they might be of help
n money-disputes ; they were sharpening their wits,
o make them useful tools for the opening of treasure-
hests. And this attitude to life was written all over
heir personalities ; they seemed to Thyrsis a coarse
md roistering crew, and he shrunk from them in re-
>ugnance.

He went his own impetuous way. He stayed at the
tniversity until he had taught himself French and
talian, as well as German, and had read all the best
iterature in those languages. And likewise he heard
ill the best music, and went about fuU of it day and
light. By this time he had definitely beaten his devils,
md had come to be master of himself; and though no-
lody guessed anything about it, there was a new marvel
joing on within him — he had, in a spiritual sense, be-
ome pregnant.

There were many signs by which this state might have
leen known. He went quite alone, and spoke to no
nan ; he was self-absorbed, and walked about with his
yes fixed on vacancy ; he was savage when disturbed,
.nd guarded his time imscrupulously. He had given
ip the very last of the formalities of life — ^he no longer
ittended any lectures, or wore cufi^s, and he would not
alk at meal-times. He took long walks at impossible
[ours, and he was fond of a certain high hiU where the
torms blew. These things had been going on for a
'ear ; and now the book that had been coming td ripe-
less in his mind was ready to be born.

It had its origin in the reading of history, and the
routing of old tyranny in its cruel forms. Thyrsis
lad come to hate Christianity for many things by that

THE VICTIM 45

time, but most of all he hated it because it taught the
bastard virtue of Obedience. Thyrsis obeyed no man —
he lived his life ; and the fiery ardor with which he lived
it was taking form in his mind as a personality. He
was dreaming a hero who should be Resistance incar-
nate; the passionate assertion of man's right and of
man's defiance.

It was in the days of ferocity in Italy, the days of
the despot and the bravo; and Thyrsis' hero was a
minstrel, a mighty musician whose soul was free. And
he sung in the despot's hall, and wooed the despot's
daughter. This was the minstrel of "Zuheka"

"His ladder of song was slight,
But it reached to her window's height;
Each verse so frail was the silken rail,
From which her soul took flight."

Thyrsis went about quite drunk with the burning
words with which the minstrel won the lady, and tore
her free from the mockeries of convention, and that
divinity that doth hedge about a princess. He bore her
away, locked tightly in his arms, and all his own — into
the great lonely mountains ; and there lived the minstrel
and the princess, the lord and the lady of an outlaw
band. But the outlaws were cruel, and the minstrel
sought goodness ; and so there was a struggle, and he
and the lady went yet deeper into the black forest,
where they dwelt alone in a hut, he a prince of hunters
and she a princess of love. But the outlaws led the
despot to the place, and there was a battle ; the princess
was slain, and the minstrel, escaped in the darkness. All
night he roamed the forest, and in the morning he lay
by the roadside with a bow in his hand, and when the
despot rode by he rose and drove the shaft through his

46 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

heart. Then they captured him, and tortured him, and
he died with a song of mockery and defiance upon his
lips.

§ 16. Now, when these things first came to Thyrsis,
he whispered in awe that it would be a life-time before
he could write them. And a year passed thus, while
every emotion of his life poured itself into some part
of that story, and every note of music that he heard
came out of the minstrel's heart. At last the time
came when he was so full of it that he could no longer
find peace; when the wonder of it was such that he
walked along the street laughing, and with tears in his
eyes. Then he said to himself, "It must be done!
Now! Now!" And he looked about him as a woman
might, seeking some place for her labor.

That was in the late winter, when the professors
at the university, and all his relatives and acquain-
tances, had given him up as a hopeless case. He had
stopped all his writing for money — he had a hundred
dollars laid by, and that would suffice him; and he was
wandering about whispering to himself: "The spring-
time! The spring-time! For it must be in the
country!" When April had come he could stand it no
longer — ^he must go! So he left all behind him, and
set out for a place in the wilderness.

When he reached it, he found a lake that was all ice,
and mountains that were all snow ; the country people,
who had never seen a poet, and knew not the subtle
difference between inspiration and insanity, heard with
wonder that he was going out into the woods. But
he set out alone, through the snowy forest and along
the lake-shore, to find some place far away, where
he could build a hut, or even put up a tent ; and when

THE VICTIM 47

he was miles from the village, he came suddenly on a
little wonderland that made his heart leap like the wild
deer in the brake. Here was a dreamland palace, a
vision beyond all thinking — a Httle shanty built of logs !
It stood in a pretty dell, with a mountain streamlet
dashing through it, and the mighty forest hiding it,
and the lake spread out in front of it. It was all wet
snow, and freezing rain, and mud and desolation ; but
Thyrsis saw the summer that was to be, and he sat
down upon a stone and gazed at it, and laughed end
sang for wonder and joy.

Then he fled back to the village, and found the owner
of the earthly rights to this paradise, and hired it
for a little gold; and then he moved out, in spite of
the snow. At last his soul was free!

Twice a week they brought him provisions, and there
he stayed. At first he nearly froze at night, and he
had to write with his gloves on ; but he did not feel
the cold, because of the fire within. He climbed the
mountains and yelled with the mad wind, and tramped
through the bare, rocking forest, singing his minstrel
songs. And all these days he walked with God, and
there was no world at all save the world of nature.
Millions of young-hearted things sprang up out of the
ground to welcome him ; the forests shook out their
dazzling sheen, and the wild birds went mad in the
mornings. All the time Thyrsis was writing, writing —
thrilling with his ecstasy, and pouring out all his soul.
He kept a little diary these days, and for weeks there
was but one entry — "The book ! The book !"

And then one day came a letter from his mother,
saying that she was coming to the village nearby to
spend the summer; also that Corydon's mother was
coming, and that Corydon would be with her!

Book II
THE SNARE

The ttrearrdet tinkled on. She sat, gazing about her
at each familiar tree and rock. And meanwhile he was
reading again from the book

"Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd!"

"Is that from 'Thyrsis'?" she asked. "Read me
those lines that we used to love so much."

And so he turned the page, and read again

"A fugitive and gracious light he seeks.
Shy to illumine; and I seek it, too.

This does not come with houses or with gold.
With place, with honor, and a flattering crew:
'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold —
But the smooth-slipping weeks
Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired;
Out of the heed of mortals he is gone.
He wends unfollow'd, he must house alone;
Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired."

§ 1. On the train Corydon was writing a letter to
a friend, to say where she was going, and that Thyrsis
- was there. "I don't expect to see anything of him," she
wrote. "He grows more egotistical and more contempt-
uous every day, and I cordially dislike him."

But when a man has spent three or four weeks with
no company save the squirrels and the owls, there comes
over him a mood of sociability, when the sight of a
friendly face is an event. Thyrsis had now written
several chapters of his book, and the first fury of his
creative impulse had spent itself. So when Corydon
stepped from the train, she found him waiting there to
greet her; and he told her that he was laying in sup-
plies for a feast, and that on the morrow she and her
mother were to come out and see his fairy-palace and
have a picnic dinner.

They came; and the May put on her finest raiment
for their greeting. The sun shone warm and bright,
and there was a humming and stirring in grass and
thicket; one could feel the surge of the spring-time
growth as a living flood. There was a glory of young
green over the hill-sides, and a quivering sheen of white
in the aspens and birches. Corydon clasped her hands
and cried out in rapture when she saw it.

And Thyrsis, picturesque in his old corduroy trousers
and his grey flannel shirt, played the host. He showed
them his domestic establishment — wherein things were
set in order for the first time since he had come. He
told all his adventures : how the cold had crept in at
night, and he had to fiddle to keep his courage up ;

51

52 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

how he had slept in a canvas-cot for the first time, and
piled all the bedding on top, and wondered that he was
cold ; how he had left the pail with the freshly-roasted
beef on the piazza, and a wild cat had carried off pail
and all. He made fun of his amateur house-keeping —
he would forget things and let them burn, or let the
fire go out; and he had tried living altogether on cold
food, to the great perplexity of his stomach.

Then he gave a demonstration of his hard-won culi-
nary skiU. He boiled rice and raisins, and fried bacon
and eggs; and they had fresh bread and butter, and
jam and pickles, and a festive cake. And after they
had feasted, Thyrsis stretched himself and leaned back
against the trunk of a tree, and gazed up at the sky,
quoting the words of a certain one-eyed Kalandar, son
of a king, "Verily, this indeed is life! 'Tis pity 'tis
fleeting!"

Afterwards he took Corydon for a walk. They
climbed the hill where he came to battle with the storm-
winds, and to watch the sunsets and the moon rising
over the lake. And then they went down into the
glen, where the mountain streamlet tumbled. Here
had been wood-sorrel, and a carpet of the white triUium ;
and now there was adder's tongue, quaint and saucy,
and columbine, and the pale dusty corydalis. There
was soft new moss underfoot, and one walked as if in
a temple.

Thyrsis pointed out a seat beside a deep bubbling
pool. "Here's where I sit and write," he said.

"And how comes the book?" asked Corydon.

"Oh, I'm hammering at it — that's the best I can say."

"What is it.?"

"Why — it's a story. I suppose it'll be called a
romance, though I don't like the word."

THE SNARE 53

Corydon pondered for a moment. "I wouldn't expect
you to be writing anything romantic," she said.

Thyrsis, occupied with his own thoughts, observed,
"I might call it a revolutionary romance."

"What is it about?"

He hesitated. "It happens In the middle ages," he
said. "There's a minstrel and a princess."

"That sounds interesting," said Corydon.

Now in the period of pregnancy the artist's mood is
one of secretiveness. But afterwards there comes a
time for promulgation and rejoicing; and already there
had been hints of this in the mind of Thyrsis. The
great secret that he was cherishing — what would be the
world's reception of it? And now suddenly a wild idea
came to him. He had heard somewhere that it is the
women who read fiction. And was not Corydon a per-
fect specimen of the average middle-class young lady,
and therefore of that mysterious potentiality, "the
public", to which he must appeal? Why not see what
she would think of it?

He took the plunge. "Would you like me to read it
to you.'"' he asked.

"Why, certainly," she replied, and then added,
gently, "If it wouldn't be a desecration."

"Oh, no," said Thyrsis. "You see, when it's been
printed, all sorts of people will read it."

So he went back to the house and brought the
precious manuscript ; and he placed Corydon in the
seat of inspiration, and sat beside her and read.

In many ways this was a revolutionary romance.
Thyrsis had not spent any of his time delving into
other people's books for "local color" ; he was not re-
lying for his effects upon gabardines and hauberks,
and a sprinkling of "Yea, sires," and "prithees." His

54 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

castle was but the vaguely outlined background of a
stage upon which living hearts wrought out their pas-
sions. One saw the banquet-hall, with its tapestries and
splendor, and the master of it, the man of force; there
were swift scenes that gave one a glimpse of the age-
long state of things

"Right forever on the scaffold.
Wrong forever on the throne."

There was a quarrel, and a cruel sentence about to be
executed; and then the minstrel came. His fame had
come before him, and so the despot, in half-drunken
playfulness, left the deciding of the quarrel to him.
He was brought to the head of the table, and
the princess was led in; and so these two met face to
face.

Here Thyrsis paused, and asked, "Are you Inter-
ested?"

"Go on, go on," said Corydon.

So he read about his princess, who was the embodi-
ment of all the virtues of the unknown goddess of his
fancy. She was proud yet humble, aloof yet compas-
sionate, and above all ineffably beautiful. And as for
the minstrel

"The minstrel was fair and young.
His heart was of love and fire."

He took his harp, and first he pacified the quarrel,
and then he sang to the lady. He sang of love, and
the poet's vision of beauty ; but most of all he sang of
the free life of the open. He sang of the dreams and
the spirit-companions of the minstrel, and of the
wondrous magic that he wields

THE SNARE 65

"Secrets of all future ages
Hover in mine ecstasy ;
Treasures never known to mortals
Hath my fancy hid for thee!"

He sang the spells that he would weave for her, the far
journeys she should take — - —

"For thy soul a river flowing
Swiftly, over golden sands.
With the singing of the steersman
Stealing into wonderlands!"

§ 2. This song was as far as Thyrsis had written,
and he paused. Corydon was sitting with her hands
clasped, and a look of enthrallment upon her face. "Oh,
beautiful! beautiful!" she cried.

A thrill of pleasure went through the poet. "You
like it, then.?" he said.

"Oh, I like it!" she answered. And then she gazed
at him, with wide-open eyes of amazement. "But you!
You !" she exclaimed.

"Why not I?" he asked.

"How in the world did you do it.'' Where did you
get it from. J""

"It is mine," said Thyrsis, quickly.

"But I can't imagine it! I had no idea you were
interested in such things !"

"But how could you know what I am interested in?"

"I see how you live — apart from everybody. And
you spend all your time in books!"

Thyrsis suddenly recollected something which had
amused him very much. Corydon had been reading

66 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"Middlemarch," and had told him that Dr. Casaubon
reminded her of him. "And so I'm still just a book-
worm to you!" he laughed.

"But isn't your interest in things always intellect-
ual.'"' she asked.

"Then you suppose I'm doing this just as an exer-
cise in technique.'"' he countered.

"It's taken me quite by surprise," said Corydon.

."We have three faculties in us," Thyrsis propounded
— "intellect, feeling, and will; and to be a complete
human being, we have to develop all of them."

"But you spend so much time piling up learning!"

"I need to know a great many things," he said. "I'm
not conscious of studying anything I don't need for
my purpose."

"What is the purpose?" she asked.

He touched the precious manuscript. "This," he
said.

There was a pause.

"But you lose so much when you cut yourself off
from the world," said Corydon. "And there are other
people, whom you might help."

"People don't need my help; or at least, they don't
want it."

"But how can you know that — if you never go among
them.?"

"I can judge by the lives they live."

"Ah !" exclaimed Corydon, quickly, "but people aren't
to blame for the lives they live!"

"Why not.?" he asked.

"Because — they can,'t help them. They are bound
fast."

"They should break loose."

THE SNARE 57

"That is easy for you to say," said Corydon. "You
have no ties."

"I did have them — I might have them still. But I
broke them."

"Ah, but you are a man!"

"What difference does that make.?"

"It makes all the difference in the world. You can
earn money, you can go away by yourself. But sup-
pose you were a girl — shut up in a home, and told that
that was your 'sphere'.?"

"I'd fight," said Thyrsis — "I'd break my way out
somehow, never fear. If one doesn't break out, it
simply means that his desire is not strong enough."

Thyrsis had been surprised at the depth of Corydon's
interest in his manuscript; he had not supposed that
she would be so susceptible to anything of the imagi-
nation. And now he was surprised to see that her
hands were clenched tightly, and that she sat staring
ahead of her intently.

"Are you dissatisfied with your life?" he asked.

"Is there anything in it that I could be satisfied
with?" she cried.

"I had no idea of that," he said.

"No," she replied ; "that only shows how stupid you
can be I"

"But — you never showed any signs "

"Didn't you know that I was trying to prepare for
college la-'t year?"

"Yes; but you gave it up."

"What could I do? I had no help — no encourage-
ment. I was groping like a blind person. And I told
you about it."

"But 1 told you what to study," objected Thyrsis.

"Yes," said the girl; "but how could I do it? You

58 LOVE'S PILGREMAGE

know how to study — you've been taught. But I don't
know anything, and I don't know how to find anything
out. I began on the Latin, but I didn't even know how
the words should be pronounced."

"Nobody else knows that," observed Thyrsis, some-
what inconsequently.

*'It was all so dulUand dreary," she went on — "every-
thing they would" have had me learn. I wanted things
that had life in them, things that were beautiful and
worth while — like this book of yours, for instance."

"I am really delighted that you like it," said Thyrsis,
touched by that.

"Tell me the rest of it," she said.

§ 3. Thyrsis told his story at some length ; in the
ardor of her sympathy his imagination took fire, and
he told it eloquently, he discovered new beauties in it
that he had not seen before. And Corydon listened with
growing delight and amazement.

"So that is the way you spend your time!" she ex-
claimed.

"That is the way," he said.

"And that is why you live like a hermit !"

"Yes, that is why."

"And you think that you would lose your vision if
you went among people.'"'

"I know that I should."

"But how do you know?"

"I know because I have tried. You don't realize
how hard I have to work over a thing like this. I have
carried it in my mind for a year ; I have lived for noth-
ing else — I have literally had no other interest in the
world. Every sentence I have read to you has been
the product of work added to work — of one impulse

THE SNARE 59

piled upon another — of thinking and criticizing and
revising. Just the little bit I have done has taken me
a whole month, and I have hardly stopped to eat; it's
been my first thought in the morning and my last at
night. And when the mood of it comes to me, then I
work in a kind of frenzy that lasts for hours and even
days ; and if I give up in the middle and fall back, then
I have to do it all over again. It's like toiling up a
moiuitain-side."

"I see," whispered Corydon. "And then, do you ex-
pect to have no human relationships as long as you
hve.?"

Thyrsis pondered for a moment. "Did you ever read
Mrs. Browning's poem, 'A Musical Instrument'.?" he
asked.

"No," she answered.

"It's a most beautiful poem," he said; "and it's
hardly ever quoted or read, that I can find. It tells how
the great god Pan came down by the river-bank, and
cut one of the reeds to make himself a pipe. He sat
there and played his music upon it

'Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

Piercing sweet by the river !
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die.
And the lilies reviv'd, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

'Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man.

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,- —

For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.' "

60 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Thyrsis paused. "Do you see what it means?" he
asked.

"Yes," said Corydon, "I see."

" 'Making a poet out of a man !' That is one of
the finest lines I know. And that's the way I feel about
it — I have given up all other duties in the world. If I
can write one book, or even one poem, that will be an
inspiration to men in the future — ^why, then I have
done far more than I could do by a lifetime given to
helping people aroimd me."

"I never understood before," said Corydon.

"That is the idea the minstrel tries to voice to the
princess. At first he pours out his soul to her; but
then, when he finds that she loves him, he is afraid, and
tries to persuade her not to come with him. He tells
her how lonely and stem his life is ; and she has been
bom to a gentle life — she has her station and her duty
in the world. But the more he pleads the hardness
of his life, the more she sees she must go with him.
Even if the end be death to her, still she will be an
inspiration to him, and give wings to his music. 'Be
silent,' she tells him — ^'let me fling myself away for a
song! To do one deed that the world remembers, to
utter one word that lives forever — that is worth all the
failure and the agony that can come to one woman in
her lifetime !' "

Corydon sat with her hands clasped. "Yes," she
said, "that is the way she would feel !"

"I'm glad to hear you say that, " remarked the other.
"I must make it real; and I've been afraid about it.
Would she really go with him?"

"She would go if she loved him," said Corydon.

*'If she loved him. But she must love his art still
more."

THE SNARE 61

"She must love him" said Corydqn.

Thyrsis shook his head. "It would not do for her
to go with him for that," he said.

"Why not.? Doesn't he love her?"

"Yes ; but he is afraid to tell her so. They dare not
let that sway them."

"I don't understand. Why not?"

"Because personal love is a limited thing, and com-
paratively an ignoble thing."

"I don't see how there can be anything more noble
than true love between a man and a woman," declared
Corydon.

"It depends on what you mean by 'true' love," re-
plied Thyrsis. "If two people love each other for their
own sakes, and go together, they soon come to know
each other, and then they are satisfied — and their
growth is at an end. What I conceive is that two
people must lose themselves, and all thought of them-
selves, in their common love for something higher —
for some great ideal, some purpose, some vision of
perfection. And they seek this together, and they re-
joice in finding it, each for the other; and so they have
always progress and growth — they stand for something
new to each other every day of their lives. To such
love there is no end, and no chance of weariness or
satiety."

"I had never thought of it just so," said the girl.
"But surely there must be a personal love in the be-
ginning."

"I don't know," he responded. "I hadn't thought
about that. I'm afraid I'm impersonal by nature."

"Yes," she said, "that's what has puzzled me. Don't
you love human beings?"

"Not as a rule," he confessed.

62 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"But then — what is it you are interested in? Your-
self?"

"People tell me that's the case. And there's a sense
in which it's true — I'm wrapped up in the thought of
myself as an art-work. I've a certain vision of the
possibilities of my own being, and I'm trying to realize
it. And if I do, then I can write books and communi-
cate it to other people, so that they can judge it, and
see if it's any better than the vision they have. It is
a higher kind of unselfishness, I think."

"I see," said Corydon. "It's not easy to under-
stand." ,

"No one understands it," he replied. "People are
taught that they must sacrifice themselves for others ;
and they do it, blindly and stupidly, and never ask if
the other person is worthy of the sacrifice — and still
less if they themselves have anything worth sacrificing."

Corydon had clenched her hands suddenly. "How
I hate* the religion of self-sacrifice!" she cried.
' "Mine is a religion of self-development," said
Thyrsis. "I am sacrificing myself for what other
people ought to be."

§ 4. They came back after a time, to the subject
of love; and to the ideal of it which Thyrsis meant to
set forth in the book. It was the duty of every soul
to seek the highest potentiality of which it had vision ;
and as one did that for himself, so he did it for the
person he loved. There could be no higher love than
this — to treat the thing beloved as one's self, to be
perpetually dissatisfied with it, to scourge it to new
endeavor, to hold it in immortal discontent.

This was a point about which they argued with eager
excitement. To Thyrsis, love itself was a prize to be

THE SNARE 63

held before the loved one ; whereas Corydon argued that
love must exist before such a union could be thought
of. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone as she main-
tained the thesis that the princess could not go with the
minstrel imless his love was given to her irrevocably,

"If you mean by love a sense of oneness in the pur-
suit of an ideal, then I agree with you," said Thyrsis.
"But if you mean what love generally means — a mutual
admiration, the worshipping of another personality —
then I don't."

"And are lovers not even to be interesting to each
other.''" cried Corydon.

But the poet did not shrink even from that. "I
don't think a woman could be interesting to me — ex-
cept in so far as she was growing. And she must
always know that if she stopped growing, she would
cease to be interesting. That is not a matter of any-
body's will, it seems to me — it is a fact of soul-chem-
istry."

"I don't think you will find many women to love you
on that basis," said Corydon.

"I never expected to find but one," was Thyrsis' re-
ply; "and I may not find even one."

She sat watching him for a moment. "I had never
realized the sublimity of your egotism," she said. "It
would never occur to you to judge anyone else by your
own standards, would it?"

"That is very well put," laughed Thyrsis. "As a
matter of fact, I have a maxim that I count all things
lost in the world but my own soul."

"Why is that?"

"Because I can depend on my own soul; and I have
not yet met anything else in life of which I can say
that."

64 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Again there was a pause. "You are as hard as
iron!" exclaimed the girl.

"I am harder than anything you can find for your
simile," he answered. "I know simply that there is no
force existing that can turn me from my task."

"You might meet some woman who would fascinate
you."

"Perhaps," he replied. "I have done things I'm
ashamed of, and I've a wholesome fear of doing more
of them. But I know that that woman, whoever she
might be, would wake up some morning and find me
missing."

Then for a while he sat staring at the eddies in the
pool below. "I have a vision of another kind of woman,"
he said — "a woman to whom my ideal would be the
same compelling force that it is to me — a living
thing that would drive her, that she was both master
of, and slave to, as I am. So that she woxild feel no
fears, and ask no favors ! So that she would not want
mercy, nor ask pledges — ^but just give herself, as I
give myself, and take the chances of the game. Don't
you think there may be just one such woman in the
world.?"

"Perhaps," was the reply. "But then — ^mightn't a
woman be sure of your ideal, but not of you?"

"As to that," said Thyrsis, "she would have to know
me."

"As to that," said Corydon, "she would have to love
you."

And Thyrsis smiled. "As in most arguments," he
said, "it's mainly a matter of definitions."

§ 6. At this point there came a call from the dis-

THE SNARE 66

tance, and Corydon started. "There is mother," she
exclaimed. "How the afternoon has flown !"
"And must you go home now?" he asked.
"I'm afraid so," she rephed. "We have a long row."
"I'm sorry," he said. "I wanted to advise you about
books to read. You must let me help you to find what
you are seeking."

"Ah," said Corydon, "if you only will !"
"I will do anything I can," he said. "I am ashamed
of not having helped you before."

They had risen and started towards the house.
"Can't you come to-morrow, and we can talk it over,"
he said.

"But I thought you were going to work," she ob-
jected.

"I can spare another day," he replied. "A rest
won't hurt me, I know. And it's been a real pleasure
to talk to you this afternoon."

So they settled it; and Thyrsis saw them off in the
boat, and then he went back to the little cabin.

On the steps he stood still. "Corydon !" he muttered.
"Little Corydon!"

That was always the way he thought of her ; not only
because he had known her when she was a child, but be-
cause this expressed his conception of her — she was so
gentle and peaceable and meek. She was now eighteen,
and he was only twenty, but he felt towards her as a
grandfather might. But now had come this new revela-
tion, that astonished him. She had been deeply stirred
by his work — she had loved it; and this was no affec-
tation, it was out of her inmost heart. And she was
not really contented at all — she had quite a hunger
for life in her!

It had been like an explosion ; the barriers had been

66 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

destroyed between them, and he saw her as she really
was. And he could hardly believe it — all through the
adventures that followed he would find himself stand-
ing in the same kind of daze, whispering to himself —
"Corydon! Little Corydon!"

He did not try to do any work that evening. He
thought about her, and the problem of her life. She
had stirred him strangely; he saw her beautiful with
a new kind of beauty. He resolved that he would put
her upon the way to some of the joy she sought.

She came early the next morning, and they sat by the
lake-shore and talked. They talked about the things
she needed to study, and how she should study them ;
about the books she had read and the books she was to
read next. And from this they went on to a hundred
questions of literature and philosophy and life. They
became eager and excited; their thoughts took wings,
and they lost all sense of time and place. There were
so many things to be discussed!

Corydon, in spite of all her anti-clericalism, believed
in immortality ; she laid claim to intuitions and illumina-
tions concerning it. And to Thyrsis, on the other
hand, the idea of immortality was the consummation of
all unfaith. To him life was a bubble upon the stream
of time, a shadow of clouds upon the mountains ; there
was nothing about it that could be or should be im-
mortal.

"The act of faith," he cried, "is to give ourselves
into the arms of life, to take it as it comes, to re-
joice in its infinite unfoldment, the 'plastic dance of
circumstance'; to behold the budding flower and the
new-born suns as equal expressions of the joy of be-
coming. But people are weak, they love themselves,
and they set themselves up as the centre of existence!"

THE SNARE 67

But Corydon was personal, and loved life; and she
stood out that death was unthinkable — that she had
the sense of infinity within her. Thyrsis strove to make
her see that one was to wreak one's hunger for infinity
at each moment, and not put it off to any future age ;
that life was a thing for itself, and needed no sequel
to justify it. "It is a free gift, and we have no claim
upon it ; we must take it on the terms of the giver."

From that they came to religion. Thyrsis loved the
forms of the old faiths, because of the poetry there was
in them ; and so he wrestled with Corydon's paganism.
He tried to show her how one could read "Paradise
Lost" and the English prayer-book, precisely as one
read Virgil and Homer; to which Corydon answered
that she had been to Sunday-school.

"But you once believed in Santa Claus !" he retorted.
"And does that make you quarrel with him now.? Every
time you read a novel, don't you pretend to believe in
people who never existed?"

He went on to show her how much she lost of the
sublime and inspiring things of the past. He took the
story of Jesus. It mattered not in the least if it was
fiction or fact — it was there, as an achievement of the
human spirit. He showed her the man of the gospels
— ^not the stained-glass god with royal robes and shin-
ing crown, but the humble workingman, with his dream
of a heaven nearby, and a father who loved his chil-
dren without distinction. .He went about among the
poor and humble, 'the world's first revolutionist ; teach-
ing the supremacy of the soul — a doctrine which was to
be as dynamite beneath the pillars of all established in-
stitutions. He lived as a tramp and an outcast, and he
died the death of a criminal; and now those who had
murdered him were using his doctrines to enslave the

68 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

world! — All this was a new idea to Corydon, and she
resolved forthwith that she would begin her readings
with the New Testament.

§ 6. So it went, until Thyrsis looked up with a start,
and saw that the shadows were falling. It was five
o'clock, and they had not stopped to eat! Even so,
they had no time to cook, but made a cold meal — and
talked all the time they were eating.

Then Corydon said, "I must start for home."

"You won't want any supper," said Thyrsis. "Let's
see the sunset first."

"But mother will be expecting me," she objected.

"She'll know you're all right," he replied.

So they climbed the hill, and sat and watched the
sunset and the rising full moon. The air was clear,
and the sky like opal, and the pale, pearly tints of the
clouds were ravishing to behold. To Thyrsis it seemed
that these colors were an image of the soul that was
disclosed to him. He would have been at a loss for
words to describe the extraordinary sense of purity that
Corydon gave to him ; it was not simply her maiden-
hood— it was something far more rare than that. Here
was an utterly perfect human soul ; a soul without speck
or blemish — without a base idea, with no trace of a
vanity, unaware what a pretense might be. The joy
and wonder of life welled spontaneously in her, she
moved to a noble impulse as a cloud. moves before the
wind. She was like a creature from the skies they
were watching.

And here, in the silver moonlight, a memorable hour
came to them. Thyrsis told her of his consecration, and
why he lived his hermit-life. He had known for years
that he was not as other men ; and now every hour it

THE SNARE 69

was becoming clearer to him. He shrunk from the
word, because it had been desecrated by the world ; but
it was Genius. More and more frequently there was
coming to him this strange ecstasy, the source of which
he could not guess ; it was like the giving way of flood-
gates within him — the pouring in of a tide of wonder
and joy. It made him tremble like a leaf, it made him
cry aloud and fall down upon the ground exhausted.
And yet, whatever the strain might be, he never lost
his grip upon himself; rather, all the powers of his
mind seemed to be multiplied — it seemed as if all exist-
fence became one with his soul.

Never before had he uttered a word of this to any-
one. No one could understand the burden it had laid
upon him. For this was the thing that all the world
was seeking, for the lack of which the world was dying ;
and it was his to give or to withhold, to lose or to save.
He had to forge it and shape it, he had to embody it, to
set it forth in images and symbols. And that meant
a terrific labor, a feat of mental and emotional endur-
ance quite indescribable. He must hold it, though it
burned like fire ; he must clutch it to his bosom, though
it tore at his heart-strings.

' "Sometimes," he said, "I fail and have to give up;
and then I have nothing but a memory without words
— or perhaps a few broken phrases that seem mere
nonsense. Then I am like a man who has seen some
loved one drowned or burned to death before his eyes.
It is a thing so ineffable, so precious ; and some power
seeks to tear it away from me, to bear it into oblivion
forever. I can't know, of course — it might come to
some one else — or it might never come again. The
feeling I have is like that of a mother for an unborn
child; if I do not give it life, no one ever will. And

70 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

don't you see — compared with that, what does anything
else count? I would lie down and be crushed to pieces,
if that would help; truly, I would suffer less than I
suffer in what I try to do. And so, the things that
other men care for — they simply don't exist for me. I
must have a little money, because I have to have some-
thing to eat, and a place to work in. But I don't want
position or fame — I don't shrink from any ridicule or
humiliation. It seems like a mad thing to say, but I
have nothing to do either with men's evil or with their
good. I am not bound by any of their duties ; I can't
have any country or any home, I can't have wife or
children — I can hardly even have any friends. Don't
you see?"

"Yes," whispered Corydon, deeply moved, "I see."
"Look," he went on — "see all the vice and misery
in the world — the cruelty and greed and hate. And
see all the stupid and petty things, the narrow motives,
the vanities and the jealousies! And all that is be-
cause people haven't this thing that has come to me;
they don't know the possibilities of life, they lack the
sense of its preciousness and sacredness. And they
seek and seek — and go astray ! Take drunkenness, for
instance; that brings them joy, but it's a false scent,
it leads them over a precipice. I've been down at the
bottom of it — you know why I have to go there, and
what I've seen. And that is where the best of men's
faculties go — yes, it's literally true ! The men who are
dull and plodding, they are contented ; it's the men who
are adventurous and aspiring who come to that preci-
pice. I walk down an avenue and see the lines of
saloons with their gleaming lights, and that thought is
like a scream of anguish in my soul ; there came a
phrase to me once, that I wanted to cry out to people

THE SNARE 71

— 'the graveyards of your genius! the graveyards of
your genius !' "

Corydon was gazing at his uplifted face. She said,
"That is how Jesus must have felt, when he wept over
Jerusalem."

"Yes," said Thyrsis. "It is a new religion trying
to be born. Only nowadays they don't persecute you,
they just ignore you. They don't hang you up on
a cross and make you conspicuous and picturesque —
they ridicule you and let you starve. And that is what
I face, you see. I've saved a hundred dollars — ^just
barely enough to buy me food until I've written the
book!"

"And other people have so much!" cried Corydon.

"So much — and no idea what to do with it. They
just fling it away, in a drunken frenzy. And down
below are the poor, who slave to make civilization pos-
sible. Such lives as they have to live — I can't ever get
the thought out of my mind, not in any happiest mo-
ment! I feel as if I were a man who had escaped from
a beleaguered city, and it all depended upon me to carry
the tidings and bring relief. I'm their one hope, and
if I fail them I'm a traitor, an accursed being! They
are ignorant and helpless, and their cry comes to me
like some great storm-wind of grief and despair. Oh,
some day I mean to utter words that will reach them —
I can't fail! I can't fail!"

"No!" whispered Corydon. "You must not fail!"

They sat in silence for a while.

"How I wish that I could help you!" she said.

"Who can tell?" he answered. "Perhaps you may.
A true friend is a rare thing to find."

"I would do anything in the world to share in such
a work."

72 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"You really mean that? As hard as it is?"

"I would bear anything," she said. "I would go to
the ends of the earth for it. I would fling away the
whole world — ^just as you have done."

"Ah, but are you strong enough? Could you stand
t?"

"I don't know that — I'm only a child. But I wouldn't
lind dying."

And so it came. It came as the dawn comes, un-
heralded, unheeded — spreading wider, till the day is
there. Months afterwards they talked about it, and
Thyrsis asked, "When did I propose to you?"

"I don't think you ever proposed to me," she an-
swered. "It just came. It had to come — there was
no other way."

"But when did I first kiss you?" he asked.

"I don't know even that," she said, and pondered.

"Did I kiss you that night when we sat on the hill?"
he asked.

"I wouldn't have known it if you had," said Corydon.
"It was as natural for you to kiss me as it was for me
to draw my breath."

§ 7. The moon was high when they went down the
hill, and he rowed her home. They were silent with the
awe that was upon them. They found the people at
home in a panic, but they scarcely knew this — and they
scarcely troubled to explain.

Then Thyrsis went home, and spent half the night
roaming about in excitement. And early in the morn-
ing he was sitting on the edge of his canvas-cot, whis-
pering to himself again, "Corydon ! Little Corydon !"

He could not think of work that day, but set out to
walk to the village by the lonely mountain-road; and

THE SNARE 73

half-way there he met the girl, coming in the other
direction. There was a light of wonder in her eyes;
and also there was perplexity. For all that morning
she had been whispering to herself, "Thyrsis ! Thyrsis !"

They sat by the roadside to talk it over.

"Corydon," he began, "I've been thinking about what
we said last night, and it frightens me horribly. And
I want to ask you please not to think about it any
more. I could not take anyone else into my life — before
God, I couldn't be so cruel. I have been shuddering at
the thought of it. Oh please, please, run away from
me — before it is too late!"

"Is that the way it seems?" she asked.

"Corydon!" he cried. "I am a tormented man!
There can't be any happiness in the world for me. And
you are so beautiful and so pure and so good — I simply
dare not think of it ! You must be happy, Corydon !"

"I have never yet been happy," she said.

"Listen," he went on — "there is a stanza of Walter
Scott's that came to me this morning — an outlaw song.
It seemed to sum up all my feeling about it:

" 'Maiden ! a nameless life I lead,
A nameless death I'll die;
The fiend whose lantern lights the mead
iWere better mate than I!' "

Corydon sat staring ahead. "You can't frighten me
away from you," she said, in a low voice. "It isn't
worth your while to try. But let me tell you what I
came to say. I'm so ignorant and so helpless — I didn't
see how I could be of any use to you. And so I wanted
to tell you that you must do whatever seemed best to
you — ^just don't count me at all. You see what I mean

74 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

— I'm not afraid for myself, but just for you. I
couldn't bear the thought that I might be in your way.
I felt I had to come and tell you that, before you went
back to your work."

Now Thyrsis had set out with mighty battlements
reared about him; and not all the houris and the cour-
tesans of all the ages could have f oimd a way to breach
them. But before those simple sentences of Corydon's,
uttered in her gentle voice, and with her maiden's gaze
of wonder — the battlements crumbled and rocked.

And that was always the way of it. There were
endless new explanations and new attitudes, new excur-
sions and discoveries. They would part with a certain
understanding, but they never knew with what view they
would meet in the morning. They were swung from one
extreme to the other, from certitude to doubt, from joy
to dismay and despair. And so, day after day they
would sit and talk, for uncounted hours. Corydon
would come to the little cabin, or Thyrsis would come to
the village, and they would wander about the roads or
the woods, forgetting their meals, forgetting all the
world. Once they wandered away into the mountains,
and they sat until the dusk closed round them; they
were almost lost that night.

"Of course," Thyrsis had been saying, "we should
not be married like other men and women."

"No," said Corydon, "of course not."

"We should be brother and sister," he said.

"Yes," she assented.

"And it would not be real marriage — I mean, it would
be just for the world's eyes."

"So I don't see how it could hinder you," Corydon
added. "Whatever I did that was wrong, you would
tell me. And then too, about money. I shouldn't be

THE SNARE 75

any burden ; for I have twenty-five dollars a month of
my own."

"I had no idea of that," said Thyrsis.

"I've only had it for a year," said Corydon. "An
aunt left me nearly four thousand dollars. I can't
touch the principal until I'm thirty, but I have the in-
come, and that will buy me everything I need. And
so it would be just as if you didn't have me to think
of."

"I don't think the money side matters so much," was
his reply. "It's only this summer, you see — until I've
finished the book."

§ 8. The key to all the future was the book ; but
alas, the book was not coming on. How could one
write amid such excitement? This was a new kind of
wine in Thyrsis' blood. This was reality ! And before
it his dream-phantoms seemed to have dissolved into
nothingness.

They would make a compact for so many days, and
he would start to work ; but he would find himself think-
ing of Corydon, and new problems would arise, and
he would take to writing her notes — and finally realize
in despair that he might as well go and see her.

Meantime Corydon would be wrestling with tasks of
her own. They had talked over her development, and
agreed that what she needed was discipline. And be-
cause Thyrsis had read her some of Goethe's lyrics,
she had decided to begin with German. Thyrsis had
wasted a great deal of time with German courses in
coUege, and so he was able to tell her everything not
to do. He got her a little primer of grammar, just
enough to make clear the language-structure ; and then
he set her to acquiring a vocabulary. He had little books

76 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

full of words that he had prepared for himself, and
these she drilled into her brain, all day and nearly all
night. She stopped for nothing but to eat — in the
woods when the weather was fair and in her room
when it rained, she studied words, words, words! And
she made amazing progress — ^while Thyrsis was wrest-
ling with his angels she read Grimm's fairy tales, and
some of Heyse's "Novellen," and "Hermann and
Dorothea," and "Wilhelm Tell."

But these were children's tasks, and her pilgrimage
was one of despair. Above were the heights where
Thyrsis dwelt, inaccessible, almost invisible; and how
many years must she toil to reach them! She would
come to him with tears in her eyes — tears of shame for
her ignorance and her stupidity. And then Thyrsis
would kiss the tears away, and tell her how many
brilliant and clever women he had met, who had the
souls of dolls behind all their display of culture.

So Corydon would escape that unhappiness — ^but
alas, only to fall into another kind. For she was a
maiden, beautiful and tender, and ineffably precious to
Thyrsis ; and when they met, their hands would come
together — it was as natural for them to embrace as for
the flowers to grow. And this would lead to moods of
weakness and satisfaction — not to that divine discon-
tent, that rage of impatience which Thyrsis craved.
It seemed to him that Corydon grew more and more
in love with him, and more willing to cling to him ;
and he was savage because of his own complaisance.
They would spend hours, exchanging endearments and
whispering youthful absurdities ; and then, the next
day, he would write a note of protest, and Corydon
would be wild with misery, and would tear up his love-
notes, and vow in tears that he should never touch her

THE SNARE 77

hand again. Now and then he would try to suggest
to her that what she needed for the fulfillment of her
life was not a madman like himself, but a husband who
would love her and cherish her, as other women were
loved and cherished; and there was nothing in all the
world that galled her quite so much as this.

§ 9. Theke came a time when all these happenings
could no longer be hid from parents. This unthink-
able "engagement" had to be announced, and the furies
of grief and rage and despair unchained. No one could
realize the change that had come over Corydon — Cory-
don, the meek and long-suflFering, who now was turned
to granite, and immovable as the everlasting hills. As
for Thyrsis, all kinds of madness had come from him,
and were expected from him. But even he was appalled
at the devastation which this thunderbolt caused.

"You have ruined your career ! You have ruined your
career!" was the cry that rang in his ears all day.
And he knew what the world meant by this. Young men
of talent who wished to rise in the world did not burden
themselves with wives at the age of twenty ; they waited
until their careers were safe — and meantime, if they
felt the need, they satisfied their passions with the
daughters of the poor. And it was for some such
"eligible man" as this that the world had been prepar-
ing Corydon ; it was to save her for his coming that
her sheltered life had been intended. Her beauty and
tenderness would appeal to him, her innocence would
bring a new thrill to his jaded passions; and when he
offered his hand, there would be no whisper of what
his past might have been, there would be no questions
asked as to any vices or diseases he might bring with
him. There would be trousseaus and flowers and wed-

78 LO^'E'S PILGRIMAGE

ding-cake, rice and white ribbons and a honeymoon-
journey ; and then an apartment in the city, or per-
haps even a whole house, with a butler and a carriage
— ^who could teU? With wealth pouring into the me-
tropolis from North and West and South, such things
fell often to beautiful and innocent maidens in sheltered
homes.

And here was this one, flinging herself away upon
a penniless poet who could not support her, and did
not even propose to try! "Does he mean to get some
work?" was the question ; and gently Corydon explained
that they intended "to live as brother and sister." And
that capped the climax — ^that proved stark, raving
madness, if it did not prove downright knavery and
fraud.

In the end, being utterly baffled and helpless with
dismay, the mothers turned upon each other; for to
each of them, the virtues of her own o£Fspring being so
apparent, it was clear that this hideous tragedy must
have come from the machinations of the other. One
day Thyrsis and his mother, walking down a road, met
Corydon and her mother, upon a high hill where the
winds blew wildly ; and here they poured out their grief,
and hurled their impeachments against the storm. To
Thyrsis they assumed heroic proporticms, they towered
like queens of tragedy ; in after-history this was known
as the Meeting of the Mothers, and he likened it to the
great contest in the Nibelimgenlied between Brunhild
and KriemhUd.

Then, on top of it all, there came another calamity.
In the boarding-house with Corydon lived some elderly
ladies, who had a remarkable faculty for divining the
eyjl deeds of other people. They had divined the evil
deeds of Corydon and Thyrsis, and one of them was

THE SNARE 79

moved to come to Corydon's mother one day, and warn
her lest others should divine them too. And so there
was more agony ; the discovery was made that Corydon
had become a social outcast to all the maids and matrons
of the summer population — a girl who went to visit
a poet in his lonely cabin, and stayed until unknown
hours of the night. And so there came to Thyrsis a
note saying that Corydon must come no more to the
cabin ; and later in the day came Corydon herself, to
bring the tidings that a telejram had come from the
city, and that she and her mother were to leave the
place the next day.

Thyrsis was aflame with anger, and was for going
to the nearest parson and having the matter settled
there and then. But Corydon dissuaded him from this.

"I've been thinking it over," she said, "and it's best
that I should go. You must finish the book — every-
thing depends upon that, and you know that if I came
here now you couldn't do it. But if I go away, there'U
be nothing to disturb you. I can study meantime; and
when we meet in the city in the fall, everything will be
clear before us."

She came and put herself in his arms. "You know,
dear heart," she said, "it won't be easy for me to go.
But I'm sure it's for the best !"

And Thyrsis saw that she was right, and so they
settled it. She spent that day with him — their last
day ; and floods of tenderness welled up in their hearts,
and the tears ran down their cheeks. It was only now
that she was going that Thyrsis realized how precious
she had become to him, and what a miracle of gentle-
ness and trust she was.

They agreed that here, and not in the village, was the
place for their parting. So they poured out their

80 LOA'E'S PILGRIMAGE

love and devotion, and made their pledges for the future ;
and towards sundown he kissed her good-bye, and put
her in the boat, and stood watching until it was a mere
speck down the lake. Then he went back to the house,
with a great cavern of loneliness in his soul.

And in spite of all resolves, he was up with the dawn
next dav, and walking to the village- — he must see her
once again ! He went to the depot with her, and upon
the platform they said another farewell; thereby put-
ting a seal upon Corydon's damnation in the eyes of the
maids and matrons of the summer population.

Book III
THE VICTIM HESITATES

They had opened a wooden box which lay beside
them.

"Ten years!" she said. "How they have faded!"

"And the creases are tight," said he; "they will be
hard to read."

"Letters! letters!" she exclaimed — "some of them
sixty pages long! How mttch would they make?"

"Perhaps a quarter of a million words," he said.

"What is to he done about it?"

"They must be selected, and then cut, and then
trimmed and pruned."

"And will that leave any idea of it?"

He answered with a simile. "You wish to convey to
3 man how it feels to pound stone for twelve hours in
the sun. The only way you could really do it would be
to take him, and let him pou/nd for twelve hours. But
he wouldn't stand for that."

"So you let him pound for one hour," said she, with
a smile.

"I will put up a sign," he said —

'Heee begins the stone-potjnding !'

And then those who are interested will come in and try
it; and the rest will peer through the fence and pass on."
To which she responded, "I would muke the sign read,
'Admission to lovers only !' "

Mt Thyrsis!

Oh, if I might only stay in a convent until you are
ready to take me! Since I left you I find myself pos-
sessed of cravings, which, if I indulged them, might
bring me the fate of the Maid of Neidpath !

Truly I have known some miserable moments. But
I am trying very hard to cultivate a happy, confident
activity. The people here are aggressive, and I am
afraid I have been rude, which I never like to be. I
just succeeded in getting away from a young man who
wanted to walk to the village with me. Do you know,
it would drive me absolutely mad to talk to anyone
now!

My soul has only one cry, and I could sometimes go
out on the mountain-side and scream it aloud to the
winds. I fear I shall be a trifle wild, in fact utterly in
pieces, until you come, with that wonderful recipe of
yours for binding me together, and making me com-
plete. I think of you in your house, and wish to God
I were there, or out in the desert even, if you were with
me.

When I passed through the city I felt exactly as
if I were in Hades. The glaring lights and the fearful
rattle, the lazy, lounging men — I had dinner in a
restaurant, in which all the people seemed to be feeding
demons ! It has been distinctly shown me why so many
people have thought you a rude unmannerly boy! I

83

84 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

don't know what people would think, if I had to be
amongst them long.

I have begun so many letters to you in my mind, and
oh, the times I have told myself how much I loved you !
I have read your letters and slept with them under my
pillow, like the veriest love-lorn maiden. But all my
happy thoughts are gone at present. It is distracting
to me to have to come into such close contact with
people.

Oh, tell me, dearest one, what I shall have to do to
control myself and preserve the peace of my soul, until
I go to you forever? I must not long to see you, it
prevents me from studying. If you might only come
to me at one moment in the day, and give me one kiss,
and then go away! You see, I am conducting myself
in a very unwise manner — and it is necessary I should
study! I should love to have an indomitable capacity
for work, and eat only two meals a day, and never have
to think about my body.

I want to tell you what I feel, how utterly and ab-
solutely I am yours, and how any image that comes
between you and me enrages me. If only you knew how
I give myself up to you in thought, word, and deed I —
My one reason for acting now, is that I may show you
something I have done, my one thought is to be what
you would wish me. No one, no one understands, or
ever will, what is in your heart and in mine — to be
locked there for ages. There I have placed all my
power of love and religion and hope of the life that
is to be. To you I give all my trust, all my worship,
you are the one link that binds me to myself and to
God. Without you I feel now that I should be a poor
wanderer.

You give me my feeling of wholeness, of the possi-

THE VICTIM HESITATES 85

bility of completion, that I never had before. In my
best and truest moments I know that with you I can
be what I have hoped. With you before my eyes I have
a grim resolution to conquer or die. The one thing I
am sure of always is my love for you. It might be
possible for you to stop loving me; but I, now that I
have begun, shall continue to love you to the day I
die — and after, I hope. I do not love you for what
you can give me, I love you because you are you, I
must love you now no matter what you are. I believe
Shakespeare was right when he said that "love is not
love which alters, when it alteration finds." I do not
believe that a person can really love more than once.

I must go to my German again and leave you.
Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?

n

Mt dearest Cortdon:

I received a letter from you before dinner, and as
usual had one of my flights of emotion, and thought
of many things to write to you. Now I am up on the
mountain-side, trying to recall them. Dearest, you
are, as always, more precious to me. I am glad to
see that you are suffering some, and I think that it is
well that you have to be away from me for awhile, to
fight some of your own soul's battles. You see that
I am in my stern humor ; as convinced as ever that
the soul is to be deepened only by effort, and that the
great glory of life cannot be bought or stolen, or even
given for love, but must be earned.

I will tell you what I have been doing since you left.
I spent three whole days in the most unimaginable

86 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

wretchedness ; I had no hindrances like yours — only the
most fearful burden of dullness and sloth, that had
crept upon me and mastered me, during all the weeks
that I had let myself be so upset and delayed. I can-
not picture what I go through when I lose my self-
command in that way, but it is like one who is tied down
upon a railroad track and hears a train coming. He
gets just as desperate as he pleases, and suffers any-
thing you can imagine — ^but he does not get free. And
always the book would be hanging before me, a kind
of external conscience, to show me what I ought to have
been.

Now I have gotten myself out of that, by an effort
that has quite worn me out. When I found myself at
work again, I felt a kind of savage joy of effort, a
greater power than I ever knew before. In the reck-
less mood that I had got to, it seemed to me that I could
keep so forever.

Now dearest, you must get the same unity in your
life ; you must concentrate all your faculties upon that
— get for yourself that precious habit of being "instant
in prayer", and "strenuous for the bright reward".
As Wordsworth has it, "Brook no continuance of weak-
mindedness!" Let it come to you with a pang that
hurts you, that for one minute you have been idle, that
you have admitted to yourself that life is a thing of
no consequence, and that you do not care for it. I
shall have to talk to you that way — perhaps not so
often as I do to myself, because I do not think you are
really in your heart such a very dull and sodden creature
as I am.

I think the greatest trial we shall have will be our
fondness for each other, and the possibility of being
satisfied simply to hold each other in our arms. But

THE VICTIM HESITATES 87

we shall get the better of that, as of everything else;
and that is not the problem now. You must learn to
strive, learn to master yourself; you must prove your
power so. Do not care how rude you have to be to those
people; look upon the things about you as a kind of
dream-world, and know that your own soul's life is the
one real thing for you. And don't write any more
about how circumstances hold you back. When you
have got to work you will know that you are given your
soul for no purpose but to fight circumstances ; that
they are the things to make you fight. When they are
removed, as I know to my cost, there is stiU the same
necessity of fighting; only it is like a horse who has
to win a race without the spurs.

You must talk to yourself about this, night and
day, until this desire is so awake in you that you can't
go idle many moments without its rushing into your
mind, and giving you a kind of electric shock. And
when that happens you fling aside every thing else,
every idea but the work that you ought to be doing,
and put all your faculties upon that; and every time
that you catch them wandering, you do the same thing
again, and again. Some times when I become very
keenly aware of myself, and of what a shallow creature
I really am, it seems to me that it is only by wearing
myself out in that grim and savage way that I can
make myself even tolerable.

I must stop. Do you know that for five precious
hours by my watch I have sat up here thinking about
you and writing to you? Dear me — and I am tired,
and frozen, for there is a cold wind. I shall have, I see,
to prove some of my powers, by not writing letters to
you when I should be at the book.

I see that it takes four or five days for letters to

88 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

come and go between us; and so if we write often, our
letters will be crossing. Four or five days is time enough
for us to change our moods a dozen times, so our cor-
respondence will be apt to be complicated !

Ill

My deakest Thtrsis:

It has worried me somewhat to-day that you might
be utterly disappointed in the letter I wrote you. It
was a wild jumble of words, but I was fighting all
sorts of uncomfortable things within me. To-day I
have been anything but despairing, and have "gone
at" the German. In fact, I quite lost myself in it, and
believe I understand thoroughly the construction of the
first poem. Wonderful accomplishment !

Your words, as I read them again, dear heart, are full
of a great beauty and fire and energy, and I only hope
you may keep them always. I believe that the possi-
bility of the marriage we both desire, depends greatly
if not entirely on your sternness. You must realize it.

I cannot tell with the proper conditions and training
what energy I might be able to accumulate for myself,
but in the meanwhile the thing that makes me most
wretched is my utter incapacity at times, and my in-
ability to share with you your work. In my weaker and
more helpless moods, I ask myself with a pang, whether
I ought to go with you at all, when I cannot help you.
But I must stop fuming. I have come out of my mud-
puddle for good and for all, and that is the main con-
sideration. I don't intend to go back.

We must not think of each other in any way but as
co-workers in a great labor ; we must simply know that

THE VICTIM HESITATES 89

our love is rooted deeply, and the harder we work the
more firm it will be. There is no reason why we should
not go to the altar with just this sternness, and from
now on preserve this attitude until the day when we
have earned the right to consider what love means. Can
you do it? I will prove to you that I can.

IV

My deab Thtesis :

I am trying very dreadfully, and go away alone and
pound at the German as if my life depended upon it.
I go to bed every night with a tight feeling in my
head, but I do not mind, as I take it for a guarantee
that I have not rested.

And oh, my dearest, dearest and best, I am trying
not to think of you too much — that is too much in a
way that does not help me to study. But I love you
really, yes, truly, and I know I would follow you any-
where. I am not particularly joyful, but then I do not
expect to be for a great many years.

Deau Thyesis:

Only a few words. I have been hovering to-day be-
tween spurts of hopeful energy, and the most indescrib-
able despair. It positively freezes my heart, and I have
been on the point of writing to you and telling you to
relieve yourself of the responsibility of me. The reason
is because it seems a perfectly Herculean task to read
"Egmont". I have to look up words in the dictionary

90 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

until I am absolutely so weary I care not about any-
thing; and then I think of you, and what you are able
to do, and at one word from you I would give up all
idea of marrying you.

I tell you I am up and down in this mood. Great
God, I could work all day and all night if I could do
what you do, but to strain at iron fetters — a snail!
Oh, I cannot tell you — I simply groan under it. At
such times I have no more idea of marrying you than
of journeying to the moon. I repeat to you, to be
constantly choked back, while you are rapidly advan-
cing, will kill me. I don't know what you will say to
this, but it is intolerable, unendurable, to me. When I
think of your ability and mine^ I simply laugh about it
— Thyrsis, it is simply ridiculous. I do not ask you
to take me with you, Thyrsis.

Do you wonder at my writing all this? You would
not if you understood. It is so hard for me to keep
any joy in my heart, and I get tired of repeated fail-
ures, that is all. I thought I must write you this, and
have it over with. This is the style of letter I have
always torn up, but this time it goes. I think I will
practice the piano now, and try to get some gladness
into my soul again.

VI

My dear, dear Thyrsis:

There is a dreadful sort of letter which I wrote you
last night which I haven't sent you yet.

I have been studying, or trying to most of the day,
and my mind has wandered most painfully. There were
two days in which I seemed to have hold of myself, but
with an effort that was a fearful strain. I must try

THE VICTIM HESITATES 91

so, that it almost kills me, if I wish to accomplish even
a little of what I ought. The heat here is almost in-
supportable, it is stifling, and I spent an hour or so
in the water this afternoon.

And the thought is always torture to me — that you
are accomplishing so much more than I ! I was think-
ing of your letters to-night, and I recalled some words
that seemed to speak more of your love for me. Oh,
Thyrsis, if your letters are fiery and passionate, is it
for love of me that they are? I'm almost afraid at
times, when I read your letters — when you tell me of
the kind of woman you want to love.

I at present am certainly not she. And do you know
that when we are married we shall be united forever.?
I don't know why I write you these things, they are
not at all inspiring thoughts to me.

And yet I was able to go in swimming this afternoon,
and forget everything and frolic around as happily as
any water-baby!

VII

My dear Coeydon:

I came off to write my poem, but I have been thinking
about you, and I must write a long letter. It is one
of the kind that you do not like.

In the first place, you complain of the contradictions
in my letters. I am sorry. I live so, struggling always
with what is not best in me, and continually falling
down. Also, in this matter I am an utter stranger,
groping my way ; and there is an element of passion
in it, a dangerous element, which leads me continually
astray.

I can only say that in my ideal of love, which is utter

92 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

love and spiritual love, I think of living my life with
you in entire nakedness of soul. Therefore, I shall
always be before you exactly as I should be by myself.
And I shall write you now exactly what I have been
thinking, what is hard and unkind in it, as well as the
rest. You will learn to know me as a man far from
perfect, often going astray himself, often feeling wrong
things, often leading you astray and making you
wretched. But behind all this there is the thing often
lost sight of, but always present — the iron duty that I
have, and the force in me which drives me to it.

All this morning I have been thinking of my book,
losing myself in it and filling myself with its glory.
This afternoon I fell to thinking about us ; and thoughts
which have been lurking in my mind for a long time got
the upper hand for the first time. They were that I
did not love you as I ought to, that I could not ; that
the love which I felt was a thing from my own
heart, and that it had carried me away because I was
anxious to persuade myself I had found my ideal upon
earth; that you could not satisfy the demands upon
life that I made, and that if I married you it would
be to make you wretched, and myself as well ; that you
had absolutely nothing of the things that I needed, and
that the life which your nature required was entirely
different from mine ; that you had no realization of the
madness that was driving me, could find and give me
none of the power I needed ; and that I ought to write
and tell you this, no matter what it cost — that I owed
it to the sacred possibility of my own soul, to live alone
if I could live better alone. And when I had said these
ivords, I felt a sense of relief, because they were haunt-
ing me, and had been for a long time.

How they will affect you I cannot tell, it depends upon

THE VICTIM HESITATES 93

how deep your love for me is ; certainly they mean for
me that my love is not deep, that you have not made
yourself necessary to me. I think that in that last
phrase I put the whole matter in its essence — you have
not hound yourself to me; I am always struggling
to keep my love firm and right, to hold myself to you.
The result is that there is no food for my soul in the
thought of our love, in my thought of you ; and there-
fore, I am continually dissatisfied and doubting, con-
tinually feeling the difference between the love I have
dreamed and our love.

I tried to think the matter out, and get to the very
bottom of it. The first thing that came to me on the
other side was your absolute truth; your absolute de-
votion to what was right and noble in our ideal. So
that, as I was thinking, I suddenly stopped short with
this statement — "If you cannot find right love with that
girl, it must be because you do not honor love, or care
for it." And then I thought of your helplessness, of
your lack of training and opportunity for growth;
and I told myself how absurd it was of me to expect
satisfying love from you — when aU that I knew about
in life, and thought of, was entirely unknown to you.
I realized that I was a man who had tasted more or
less of all knowledge, and had an infinite vision of
knowledge yet before him, and an infinite hunger for
it; and that you were a school-girl, with all of a
school-girl's tasks on your hands. So I said to myself
that the reason for the dissatisfaction was a fault of
my own, that it had come from my own blindness. I
had gone wrong in my attitude to you ; I had failed in
my sternness and my high devotion to perfection ; I had
contented myself with lesser things, had come down from
my best self, and had failed to make you see what a

94 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

task was before you, if you ever meant to know my best
self. You perceive that this is a return to my old-time
attitude; I am sorry if it makes you wretched, but I
cannot help it. It is a surgical operation that must
be borne. I shall not make it necessary again, I hope.

Now, dear Corydon, I am not trying to choose
pleasant words in this letter, this is the way I talk
to myself. And if anything good comes from our love,
it will be because of this letter. I challenge what is
noblest in you to rise to meet the truth of it. I should
not care to write to you if I did not feel that it would.

You have had a possibility offered to you, and because
you are very hungry for life you have clasped it to
you, placed all your happiness in it. The possibility is
the love of a man whose heart has been filled with the
fire of genius. There are few men whom life takes
hold of as it does me, who sacrifice themselves for their
duty as I do, who demand experience — knowledge,
power, beauty — as I do. There are very few men who
will wrest out of existence as much as I will, or know
and have as much of life. I am a boy just now, and
only beginning to live ; but I have my purpose in hand,
and I know that if I am given health and life, there
is nothing that men have known that I shall not know,
nothing that is done in the world that I shall not do,
or try to. I have a strong physique, and I labor day
and night, and always shall. I shall always be hungry
and restless, always dissatisfied with myself, and with
everything about me, and acting and feeling most of
the time like a person haunted by a devil. I make no
apologies to you for the conceit of what I am saying;
it is what I think of myself, without caring what other
people think. I know that I have a tremendous tempera-
ment, tremendous powers hidden within me, and they

THE VICTIM HESITATES 95

have got to come out. When they do, the world will
know what I know now.

Now Corydon, as you understand, I dream love ab-
solute, and would scorn any other kind. I can master
my passion, if it be that upon earth there is no woman
willing or able to go with me to the last inch of my
journey. I dream a life-companion to follow wherever
my duty drives me ; to feel all the desperateness of de-
sire that I feel, to be stem and remorseless as I must
be, wild and savage as I must be; to race through
knowledge with me and to share my passion for truth
with me ; a woman with whom I need have no shame in
the duty of my genius ! As I teU you, if I marry you,
I expect to give myself to you as your own heart; and
then I think of the gentle and nuld existence you have
led!

It is very hard for me even to tell about my hfe, or
to explain this thing that drives me mad. But I am
writing this letter to you for the purpose of making
clear to you that there are two alternatives before you,
and that you must choose one or the other and stick
by it, and bear the consequences. It is painful to me
to think that I have fascinated you by what oppor-
tunities I have, even by what power and passion and
talents I have, and fiUed you with a hunger for me —
when really you do not realize at all what I am, or
what I must be, and when what I have to do will terrify
you. I write in the thought of terrifying you now,
and making you give up this red-hot iron that you are
trying to hold on to; or else to show you my life so
plainly that never afterwards can you blame me, or
shrink back except by your own fault.

You must not blame me for writing these words,
for wondering if a woman, if any woman has power

96 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

to stand what I need to do. And when I talk to you
about giving me up, you must not think that is cold,
but know that it is my faithfulness to my vision, which
is the one thing to which I owe any duty in the world.
Nor is it right that you should expect to be essential
to me, when I have labored to be all to myself. You
could become necessary to me in the years to come ; if
I marry you to-day I shall marry you for what you
are to become, and for that alone — at any rate if I
am true to myself.

If you are to be my wife you are to be my soul —
to live my soul's life and bear its pain. You are to
understand that I talk to you as I talk to myself, call
you the names I call myself, and if you cry, give you
up in disgust ; that I am to deny you all pleasure as 1
do myself, and what God knows will be ten thousand
times harder, let you take pleasure, and then spring
up in the very midst of it — ^you know what I mean!
That I am to be ever dissatisfied with you, ever incon-
siderate of your feelings, and ever declaring that you
are failing ! That however much I may love you, I am
to be your conscience, and therefore keep you — ^just
about as you are now, miserable ! You told me that you
would gladly be whipped to learn to hve; and this can
be the only thing to happen to you.

You must imderstand why I act in this way. I am
a weak and struggling man, with a thousand tempta-
tions ; and when I marry you, you will be the greatest
temptation of all. You are a beautiful girl, and I love
you, £ind every instinct of my nature drives me to you ;
for me to live with you without kissing you or putting
my arms about you, will remain always diiEcult. It will
be so for you, as for me, and it will always be our
danger, and always make us wretched. Your soul rises

THE VICTIM HESITATES 97

in you as I write this, and you say (as you've said
before) that if I oflFered to kiss you after it, it would
be an insult. But only wait until we meet!

This is the one thing that has become clear to me:
just as soon as there comes the least thought of satis-
faction in our love, just so soon does it cease to satisfy
my best self. You cannot satisfy my best self, you
do not even know it ; and if it were a question of that,
I should never dream of marrying you ! I love you for
this and for this alone — because you are an undeveloped
soul, the dream of whose infinite possibilities is my one
delight in the matter. I think that you are perfect
in character, that you are truth itself; and therefore,
no matter how helpless you may be, I have no fear of
failing to make you "all the world to me", provided only
that I am not false to my ideal. You must know from
what I have written before that I can love, that I do
know what love is, and that you may trust me. I am
not trying to degrade passion — I simply see how pas-
sion throws the burden on the woman, and therefore it
is utterly a crime with us — the least thought of it! I
ought to consider you as a school-girl, really just that ;
and instead of that I write you love letters !

I tell you there is nothing more hateful for me to
look back upon than that childish business of ours,
that time when we went upstairs that we might kiss
each other unseen. I tell you, it revolts my soul, from
love and from you! I should be perfectly willing to
take all the blame — I do ; only I have led you to like
that (or to act as if you did) and I must stop it. Can
you not understand how hateful it is to me to think of
making you anything that I should be disgusted with?

I expect you to read over this letter until you realize
that it is, every word of it, completely true and noble.

98 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and until you can write me so. You and I are to feel
ourselves two school-children and live just so. It is
not usual for school-children to marry, but that we dare
upon the strength of our purpose, and in defiance of all
counsel, and of every precedent. We are to feel that
we owe our duty to our ideal; and that simply because
of the strength and passion of our love for each other,
we demand perfection, each of the other. My setting
this stern challenge before you is nothing but my de-
termination to give you my right love, to demand that
you be a perfect woman.

I promise you therefore no quarter ; I shaU make no
sacrifice of my ideal for your sake. As I wrote you, I
mean to be absolutely one with you, and I expect you
to be the same. You shall have (if you wish it) all of
my soul — I shall live my life with you and think all my
thoughts aloud — study to give you everyihmg that I
have. And God only, who knows my heart, knows what
utter love for you lies in those words, what utter trust
of you — ^how I think of you as being purity and holi-
ness itself. To offer to take any other being into my
soul, to lay bare all the secret places of it to its gaze,
aU the weaknesses as well as all the strength, and all
that is vain as well as aU that is sacred! You cannot
know how I feel about my heart, but this you may
know, that no one else has had a glimpse of it, you are
the first and the last; and so sure am I of you that I
dare to say it, aU my life wiU I live in your presence,
and ti-ust to your sympathy and truth — and feel that
I am false to love if I do not. If there were anything
in my heart so foul that I feared to speak of it, I should
give you that first, as the sacrifice of love; or any
vanity or foible — such things are reaUy hardest to have
others know, so great is our conceit.

THE VICTIM HESITATES 99

If I could talk to you to-night, I should do just as
I did up on the hill in the moonlight — frighten you,
and make you wonder if there was any woman who
wished to bear such a burden ; and perhaps the saddest
thing of all to me is that I do not bear it — instead I
bear the gnawing of a conscience bitter and ashamed
of itself . And could you bear fAa* burden? For Cory-
don, as I look at myself to-night, I am before God,
a coward and a dastard ! I have not done my work !
I have not borne the pain He calls me to bear, I have
not wrested out the strength He put in my secret
heart! And here I am chattering, talking about work
to you ! And these things are like a nightmare to me ;
they turn all my life's happiness to gall. And you are
taking upon yourself this same burden — coming to
help me to get rid of it. Or if you do not wish to, for
God's sake, and mine, and yours, don't come near me —
you have come too near as it is ! Can you not see
that when I am face to face with these fearful things
— and you come and ask me to give my life to you, to
worship you with the best faculties I possess — that I
have no right to say yes.''

You once told me you were happy because I called
you "mein guter Geist, mein bess'res Ich" ; well, you
are not in the least that. The name that I give you,
and that you may keep, is "the beautiful possibility of
a soul". Remember a phrase I told you at the very
beginning of our love, of the peril of "ceasing to love
perfection and coming to love a woman." And read
Shelley's sad note to "Epipsychidion" !

100 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

VIII

Deae Corydon:

You tell me in your last letter that you are leaving
all who love you ; and you ask "How do you know that
because you love beauty, you will love me?"

I have been thinking a good deal about this ; I do
not believe, Corydon, that a man more haunted by the
madness of desire ever lived upon earth than I. And
when I get at the essence of myself, I do not believe
that I am a kind man; I think that a person with less
patience for human hearts never existed, perhaps with
less feeling. There is only one thing in the world that
I can be sure of, or that you can, my fidelity to my
ideal ! I know that however often I may fail or weaken,
however many mistakes I may make, my hunger for the
things of the soul will never leave me, and that night
and day I shall work for them. I do not believe I have
the right to promise you anything else, I have no right
to dream of anything else ; this is not my pleasure, as I
feel it, it is a frenzy, it is that to which some blind and
nameless and merciless impulse drives me. And I may
try to persuade myself all my life that I love you,
Corydon, and nothing else, and want nothing else ; and
all the time in the depths of my heart I hear these words
from my conscience — "You are a fool." I love power,
I love life, and seek them and strive for them, and care
for nothing else and never have; and nothing else can
satisfy me. And I cannot give any other love than this,
any other promise.

THE VICTIM HESITATES 101

IX

My dear Cokydon :

I have been taking a walk this morning, thinking
about us, and that I had treated you fearfully. The
whole truth of it all is this — that I am so raw and so
young and so helpless (and you are as much, if not more
so) that I cannot, to save my life, be sure if my love for
you is what it ought to be, or even if I could love any
one as I ought. And I am so wretchedly dissatisfied!
Do you know that for two weeks I have been trying to
write a passage of my book — and before God, I cannot!
I have not the power, I have not the life!

Dear Corydon, it comes to me that you are miserable
to be in love with me — that I had no right to put this
burden on your shoulders. I would say better things
if I could, but I think that our marriage will be a
setting out across a wild ocean in the dark! It is for
you to be the heroine, to dare the voyage if you choose.
These sound like wild words, but they are the truth
of my life, and I dare not say any others. Can a girl
who has been brought up in gentleness and sweetness,
in innocence of life and of pain — can she say things,
feel things like these?

X

Thtesis :

God did not endow me with your tongue, or else it
would not be the great effort it is to me to tell you some
of the thoughts that have rushed through my mind
in the last hour.

It is an hour since I began to read your letter of
Horrible Truth. Now it seems to me it might have

102 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

been in the last year, in the last century. Actually I
feel like a stranger to myself; and my movements are
very slow. First, I will tell you that I believe in God,
oh, so implicitly — this thought gives me infinite hope.
I long to let you know as much of my heart as I can,
if I am to be your life-companion, as I firmly believe
I am to be. I have such a strange calmness now, and
I imagine that I must feel very much the way Rip Van
Winkle did when he awoke. I want to try to show you
my heart — it is right that I should try, is it not.''

Know that I have placed much faith and trust in
you, in anything that you did. If you opened one door
to me and told me it led to the great and permanent
truth, I believed you absolutely. If you hauled me
back and put me through an opposite one, telling me
that there my road lay, I believed you with equal faith.
Now, now, at the end of an hour, I am, through you,
convinced of one door, the only and true entrance; and
I am as sure as I am that the sun is shining at this
moment, that nothing in God's world can ever again
make me lose sight of it. I have found that you can
lose sight of it, Thyrsis, — something shows me that I
have in the last month been more right than you. Yes,
I have, Thyrsis, though you may not know it. And
the reason I couldn't stay right was because I am not
strong enough to grasp my good impulses, and keep
hold of them: because I have not enough faith in the
soul within me.

I will try to teU you what I have felt since reading
your letter. All is so disgustingly calm in me now.
But listen, I believe I have had a little glimpse this
afternoon of what it is to feel; and because of that
knowledge I now am not afraid to tell you that I claim
something of God and life — that I can get it if you

THE VICTIM HESITATES 103

can. This has been very strong in me at moments,
but, as I tell you, I have not yet learned to hold my
glimpses of truth — they seem to come to me, and as
quickly disappear.

I began to read your letter, and I cannot describe
to you the convulsion that came over me. It seemed
that I had the feeling of an empty skuU on a
desert ; such a feeling — ^you can never have it ! All
the horror and despair! I tried to form my thoughts
and teU myself it was not true. I tried to pray, and I
did pray — out loud — and asked God to give me strength
to read the letter.

I tried to use all the penetration I was capable of,
to find out one thing, whether you were purely and
unreservedly sincere in it. I wondered whether you
reaUy wished to hve your hfe alone, but could not find
the courage to tell me so. I firmly believe that no
failure in the future, no disgust or helplessness, could
ever bring me the complete anguish of those moments.

Can you realize what such a thing meant to me,
Thyrsis?

Last spring, I had succeeded in bringing myself into
an almost complete state of coma — I saw that I could
do nothing, and because I would not endure such profit-
less pain I drugged myself to sleep. And you, you
fiend, waked me up ; and may your soul be thrice cursed
if you have only pulled the doll to pieces to see what it
was made of! Know, you that have a soul which
says it lives and suflTers — that I can't go to sleep again !
There is no joy for me in mother or father, in friends
or admiration — I can tolerate nothing that I tolerated
before you came with your cursed or blessed fire !

Also, if you do not marry me, or if I do not find some
man who has your strength and desire for hfe, and

104 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

who will take me and help me to learn, I shall die with-
out having lived. — ^And I cried out in misery — only
forty-two years, only forty-two little years, and I shall
be an old woman of sixty! Only forty-two years in
which to learn to live!

I believe if I had you here now I could almost strangle
you. We may kiU each other some day. I sometimes
feel that there is nothing that will give me any relief,
that I cannot breathe, I cannot support my body. But
these are foolish and unprofitable feelings — and I be-
lieve I will yet be saved, if not by you, perhaps by
myself. I think some heavenly aid came to me to-day.
I asked for it, I simply said it must come — and now I
am able to bear myself and look around me, and say
that the secret of my liberation is not death but life.

Please realize, Thyrsis, that I know you do not need
me, that I cannot either entertain you or help you.
My dear, do you not know that I have been conscious
of this from the very beginning — and it has been this
thought that has often made me worry, and doubt, and
question. And then I have told myself that you had
found somethimg in me to love ; and that I also was very
hungry to know about life and God; and that if you
loved me enough to believe I was not dross, we might,
with our untiring devotion — well, we might be right
in going with each other. And now — ^would you rather
I should tell you I will not marry you, be my desire,
or effort, what it may? I do not know — even though
I want to live so terribly. I have no word, no proof
to give!

And now, Thyrsis, I have no more strength to write.
I only wish I had some power to make you know what
I have felt this afternoon — I think if I could, you

THE VICTIM HESITATES 105

would have no more doubt of me. And I believe it is
my God-given right not to doubt myself.

I will write no more — I have written enough to make
you answer one of two things. "Come with me," or,
"I would rather go alone." I know which one it will
be, even now in my wretchedness. The sky is so blue
this evening, and everything is so beautiful — and I am
trying so hard to be right, to feel strong and confident !

XI
Deab Thtesis:

I have just arisen. I woke in the middle of the night,
and there was a spectre sitting by my bedside to
frighten me ; he succeeded at first, but I managed finally
to get rid of him, and to find some peace. Many of
your sentences came to me, and I was able to get be-
hind the words, and I saw plainly that the letters were
just what you should have written, and that they could
not but benefit me. They have accomplished their pur-
pose, I believe — they are burned into my soul, and have
placed me rightly in our relation. I shall simply never
trust the permission you may give me, in the future,
to rest or be satisfied. I shall only hate you, for the
pain of some of your words I shall never forget.

The memory of the first two pages of your letter
will always put me in mortal terror of you. For the
rest, I am very grateful, and I will try to show you
how I love your ideal. I can never repay you as long
as I live for letting me come with you. Oh Thyrsis,
I am sure that I will never think or care whether you
love me or not, if only I may go with you and learn
how to strive!

I tore up all your love-letters this morning. I kept

106 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

the last letter — though I do not think I could bear to
read it over. I should be afraid of again going
through with that despair. Oh, I beg for the time
when I shall be obliged to waste none of my minutes —
and when I shall have no opportunity of writing you !
What time I have spent over your letters and mine !

xn

Deak Thyusis:

I am restlessly waiting for the supper-bell to ring,
and my head is aching intensely, and I am generally
topsy-turvy. Alas! alas! the distance that separates
us and our imderstanding !

I received a letter to-day while I was studying — but
said I would not open it for a week, that I wanted
strength to study. Well, I studied all the afternoon
and found it none too easy. When I came home, I
thought perhaps it was better to read your letter, which
I grimly did.

Do you know, you are keeping me on the rack, liter-
ally on the rack, and my flesh and blood do not seem
to be able to stand it — my body seems to be the organ
that first fails me, my brain is never so tired as my
body. I love to think that you are not less merciful
to me than you would be to yourself, I feel that you
could not have used more cruel whips to yourself. Do
you suppose that any disgust, scolding, or malediction
to me could, as your wife, hurt me, as your doubt of
me hurts me now.''

And I just begin to read your letter again, and
I tell you, you are a fool. You say you do not know
whether you could love any one as you ought — well,
I, with all my weakness, know whether / can love, and

THE VICTIM HESITATES lOT

I love you a thousand times more than you have given
me cause to. And you are so hungry! Will you always
starve because you are blind? As to being satisfied,
how could you be? But you say you will love me as
much as I deserve. How much do I deserve — do you
know? I sometimes cry out against you and long to
get hold of you. If you have genius, why doesn't it
give you some inkling whether you are a man with a
heart, not only a stupid boy? And then I see it all
plainly, or think I do, and know that you are trying
so hard to be right towards us, because you think you
love me the way other people love; and you know if I
am weak, it would degrade your genius ; and you can-
not be sure of my character or strength. You cannot
know whether I realize the life I am selecting — you
have found it hard, and you have every reason to think
that I will find it ten times harder ; and you love me in
a way that is not the highest, — ^but yet you love me
enough, thank God, to tell me the whole truth!

I have come to a pass where I can say to myself with
• truth, that I do not care how much or how little you
love me. That depends upon you, as well as myself. I
believe the time wiU come, when you will love me as you
ought, and I say this in perfect calm conviction, in
all my weakness, and with all my maudlin habits cling-
ing to me. Strangely enough your doubt of me has
made me rise up in arms to champion my cause, or else
I should lie down forever in the dust, and deny my
God.

I wonder whether it is my love for you that makes
me believe? I cling to you, as a mother might cling
to her child; I cling to you as the embodiment, the
promise, of all I will ever find true in life. I look to
live in you, to fulfil all my possibilities in you, and if

108 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

you die or forsake me, all my hope is gone, and I am
dead. This is a letter in which I have no scorn or doubt,
or ridicule of myself, as formerly.

And then you ask me, "Can a girl brought up in
gentleness and sweetness, and innocence of life and of
pain, can she say things, feel things like these?" It is
the gentleness and sweetness and innocence that are
galling to me. I can tolerate no more of them. They
have warped me, they have given me no chance. But
I have had some pain in my life, and since I have
known you I have known more about pain and what it
brings, and leaves. — ^And now I am feeling iH, and I
cannot control that. Oh, God!

XIII

Dearest Coeydon:

I have a chance to finish the first part of my book
to-day, and save myself from Hades ; and here I am
writing to you — ^just a line. (Of course it turned out
to be six pages ! )

Your last letter was very noble; I can only say to
you, that the treatment which makes you upbraid me
is not done for my sake; that the life which I live is
not lived for my sake. You say perhaps you are better
than I; it is very possible — I often think so myself;
but that is nothing to the point. I should be very
wretched if I sat down to think what I am. Oblige me
by being better than my ideal — if you can ! You must
understand, dearest, that behind all that I am doing,
there is truth to the soul; and that truth to the soul
is love, and the only love. I am seeking for nothing
but the privilege of treating you as myself; and rest
assured, that if I treat you any diiferently it will be

THE VICTIM HESITATES 109

better than I treat myself! There is no peril in our
life except that!

Some day you will understand that I can sometimes
feel about myself that I am utterly hateful, utterly
false, utterly shallow and h(id; and that to get away
from myself would be all that I desire in life. I cannot
imagine my having such opinion of you ; but some dis-
satisfactipn — ^just a little — I may have. Only let us
love perfection, you and I, with all our souls, and I
think our love for each other may safely be allowed
to take care of itself. Remember the two ships in
Clough's poem, which parted, but sailed by the compass,
and reached the same port.

I shall spend no more time comforting you about
this.

And dear Corydon, when you are angry at my doubt-
ing your power, and say that I do not know you, I can
only reply — Why of course I don't, and neither do you.
You find your own self out little by little — why get
angry with me because I don't know it until you tell
me ? You are a grown woman compared to what you were
three months ago ; and this character that you ask me
to know — well, it takes years of hard labor to prove
a character,

XIV

Dearest Coeydon:

Do you ever realize how much faith in you I have. J*
As utterly different is your whole life, as if you had
been in another world; and through all the wilderness
that I have travelled, I hope to drag you. But I cannot
carry you, or take you ; I must trust in the frenzy of
your grip upon me. There is nothing else you could
have that I would trust. You might be wonderfully

110 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

clever and wonderfully wise — and I could do noth.ag
with you. Do you remember Beethoven's saying, that
he would like to take a certain woman, if he had time,
and marry her and break her heart, so that she might
be able to sing?

Ah dear heart, I wish you could read in my words
what I feel! I wonder if I am dreaming when I live
in this ideal of what a woman's love can be — so com-
plete and so utter a surrender, so complete a forgetting,
a losing of the self, so complete a living in another
heart ! I am not afraid to ask just this from a woman
— from you! For I have enough heart's passion to
satisfy every thirst that you may feel. Ah, Corydon,
I want you! I am drunk with the thought of making
a woman to love. I wonder if any man ever thought of
that before ! Artists go about the world with the great
hunger of their hearts, and expecting to find by chance
another soul like the one they have spent years in mak-
ing beautiful and swift and strong ; but has anyone ever
thought that instead of writing books that no one un-
derstands, he might be making another kind of an art-
work— one that would be aUve, and with sacred possi-
bilities of its own?

XV

Deak Thyksis:

Your last letters have been very beautiful. I see one
thing — though you inform me that you believe you are
a hard man, your natural gentleness and sympathy of
heart would be the ruin of both of us in the future
if I would permit it. But I think you can trust me,
not ever as long as I live to lead you into weakness.
My desperateness, before I received your letter saying
that I might come with you, was rather dreadful; it

THE VICTIM HESITATES 111

made me doubt myself, for it was so difficult to keep
myself from going to pieces. I have been wicked
enough, to wonder whether I could ever make you feel
as I felt for two days — if I could only bring to your
heart that one pang, the only real one I ever felt in
my life! But it taught me one thing, that the only
road toward realization of life and one's self is through
suffering. I found out that I could bear, for it seems
to me as I look back at that horrible nightmare, that
it was almost by a superhuman effort I was able to read
the letter at all. But enough of that !

I think I have effectually cured myself of any weak
yearning for your love. I go to you in gratefulness,
knowing what I lack and what you need. Anything
my love can do for you, it shall do. It may have some
power — I sometimes think that it could have more than
you realize.

I suppose every woman has thought that the man
she loved was her very life, but I do not think it of
you, I simply know it. I must go with you, whether I
loved you or not.

Meanwhile my love has assumed a strength to me that
I never felt before. I don't know how my wild and in-
coherent letters have affected you, but there were many
times when I longed to get hold of you, literally, and
simply shake into you some recognition of my soul.
Oh, I am afraid you couldn't get away from me; the
more merciless you are to me, the wilder I get.

I am possessed by so many opposite moods and in-
fluences. I am afraid of you a little. I never know
what you are going to do to me.

I feel, I cannot help but feel, that I am part of
your life, now, you could not neglect me any more
than you could your own soul. I consider you just

lU LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

as responsible for mine as you are for your own. I
say this with no doubts, but know that it is true, and
you must know it.

XVI

Dear Thyesis:

You certainly have a wonderful task in store for me,
and I pray God to give me strength for it. I can see
very plainly that you expect to find the essence of my
soul better than yours, because it seems that you are
making my task harder than yours.

Do you know, I have actually found myself asking,
at times, with a certain defiant rage — if you were
actually going to give love to your princess before you
had made her suffer! So far you have not made her
suffer at aU. I had become quite excited over this idea
— though perhaps I had no right to. I suppose it is
all right, because she is an imaginary person, and you
can endow her with all the perfections you please. She
is triumphant and thrilling, and worthy of love —
whereas I am just little Corydon, whom you have known
all your life, and who is stupid and helpless, and im-
possible to imagine romances about! Is that the way
of it.?

XVII

My dearest Thyrsis:

A long letter has just come to me. I always receive
your letters with many palpitations, and by the time I
get through reading, my cheeks are flaming. It is too
bad it takes letters so long to go to and fro.

I have finally come to bear the attitude towards my-
self, that I would to a naughty child. I will have no

THE VICTIM HESITATES 113

nonsense, and all my absurdities and inefficiencies must
be cured. I think I have come to know myself a little
better within the last few days. I know that I have no
right to quick victories, or any happiness at all, even
your love. I tell you truly, if it were only possible,
I would go away this minute — do you hear.? — oh! to
some lonely place, and then I would do something with
myself. I want to be alone, alone — I want to be face
to face with myself, and God, if possible ! I have come
to the conclusion that I can do anything I must do.
I think (I am not sure) I could give you up, if I were
obliged to, and go away by myself and try alone. If
I do not have you, I must have solitude.

xvni

Mt dearest Cortdon:

Thinking about my work this morning, and how hard
it was, and how much strength it would take, my
thoughts turned to you, and I discovered, as never be-
fore, just how I like to think of you. It seemed to me
that you were part of the raw material that I had to
use; that I had mastered you, and was going to make
you what you had to be. And there woke in my heart
at those words a fierceness of purpose that I had never
felt in my life before — I was quite mad with it ; and you
cried out to escape me, but I would not let you go, but
held you right tightly in my arms. And so — I do not
mean to let you go ! I shall bear you away with me,
and make you what I wish. And the promise of mar-
riage that I make you is just this : not that I love you
— I do not love you ; but what I wish the woman to be
whom I am to love — that I will make you !

114 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

And do not ever dare to ask me for any other promise,
for you will not get it. You will come with this.

XIX

My Thyrsis :

I had an iron grip at my heart just now, as I was
trying to study. I had a foreboding of something —
and then I came home and found your letter telling
me I was yours, and I must. At last I may go to you
the way I wish ! My love, my love, I do not care what
you are, or what you do to me, as long as I may go
with you.

How I laugh at myself as I say it ! You have mas-
tered me to worship your life — not you. I shall not
work for your love, I shall work to live. Our love will
be one of the incidents of our life. Meanwhile, I may
go with you, that is all that I say — I sing it. I may
go with you, not to happiness, but to necessity!

And now that cursed German! It hangs over my
head like a sword of Damocles I have heard of — though
I don't know why it was held over his head !

You think our love was settling into the cooing
state ! Dear me, Thyrsis, I hope I will not always have
to yell to you over a foggy ocean!

XX

Dear Thyesis:

Can you imagine what It must be to be shut up in
a little room on a rainy night, with the children and
people screaming under your window? • That is my
position now.

I find myself hard to manage at times. I want to

THE VICTIM HESITATES 115

become discouraged or melancholy or disgusted, but I
drive myself better than I used to. I even was happy
a little for a few moments to-night. I was playing one
of my piano-pieces, and I found myself imagining all
sorts of things. But this happens very seldom, and
only lasts for a moment. I often wonder at myself.
Two months ago I did not love you one particle ; I love
you now, so that — so that it is impossible for me to
do anything else. In fact I did not realize how much
I loved you until that terrible moment when I read you
did not love me. I saw how impossible it wiU be to
cease to love you, no matter what you do to me. I do
not know why it is; I simply know it is, and perhaps
some day I may teach you how to love. I do not imagine
you know how very well, at present — ^no, Thyrsis, I
don't.

I know your true self now, and I love it better than
ever I loved the other. I say it with a certain grim-
ness. I know you, your real self, and I love it.

Know, oh, my Beloved, that in the last three months
you have grown to me from a boy into a man, into
my husband ! When I think of you as you were at first
you seem a child compared to what you are now.

XXI

Dearest Love:

Last night, as I went to sleep, I was thinking of you
and our problem, and there were aU sorts of uncer-
tainties ; but one thing I have to tell you, my Corydon
— that it came to me how sweet and true, and how pure
and good you have been ; and I loved you very, very
much indeed. I thought : I should like to tell her that,
and ask her always to be so noble and unselfish. Can

116 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

jou not realize how all your deficiencies are as nothing
to me, in the sight of that one unapproachable per-
fection? For my Corydon is all devotion and love, and
pure, pure, maiden goodness! And there is quite a
whole heart full of feeling for you in that, and I wish
I had you here to tell you.

XXII

My Corydon :

I am coming more and more to realize myself, and
what is the single faculty I have been given. I think
of a dear clergyman friend I used to have, and I realize
what a loving heart is — what it is to delight in a human
soul for its own sake, and to be kind to it, fond of it.
And I know that there could not be a man with less
of that than I have. Certainly I know this, I never
did love a soul for its own sake, and don't think I could.
I love beauty, and truth, and power, and I hate every-
thing else, if it come across my way. If I had to live
the life of that clergyman friend I should be insane in
a month. I see this as something very hateful; but
there is only one thing I can do, to see that I hate my
own self more than I hate any other self — and work,
work, for the thing I love.

• You asked me once to tell you if your death would
make any difference to me. If you were to die to-mor-
row I should feel that a sacred opportunity was gone
out of my life, that all my efforts must have less result
forever after. But I do not think I should stop work-
ing a day.

I love you because you are something upon which
I may exert the force of my will. I honestly believe that
the truest word, the nearest to my character, I ever

THE VICTIM HESITATES 117

spoke. If I care about you it is for one thing, and
one only — because you are a soul hungry for life, be-
cause you are capable of sacrifice and high effort, be-
cause you are sensitive and eager. I love you and honor
you for this ; I take you to my bosom, I give all my life
to your service ; and I shall make you a perfect woman,
or else kill you.

You must understand what I want; I want no con-
crete thing, no dozen languages to throw you into
despair. I want effort, effort, effort! That's all. And I
believe that you might be a stronger soul than I at
this moment, if only you chose to hunt yourself out
and fight! That is truly what I feel about you, and
that is why I love you.

xxm

Deaeest Thyesis:

I have no more to say, my precious one; I bow in
joy before your will, your certainty, your power. Let
it be so, I shall adore you as I so long to do.

You are giving me all I could ask for. What more
could I wish from you, dear Thyrsis, than to know
you win never leave my side? I will try not to do
any more bemoaning of my shortcomings. To-night
I reached a wonderful security and almost sublimity,
until I could have fallen on my face and praised God
for His mercy. I talked out loud to myself, I ex-
horted myself, I explained to myself what is my beauty
and possibility in life — the reason for which I was
bom. I was quite lifted out of myself, by a conviction
that came like a benediction, that the essence of my
soul was good and pure, and that if anybody upon
earth had the power to reach God, it was myself.

118 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Dear God, how I have spent the years of my life!
like an imbecile! But you — if you take me, I shall go
mad — I shall love you like a tigress ! I shall implore
you to invent any way that will enable me to reaUze
life! Oh, if you take me, how madly I shall love you!
I fancy myself seeing you now, and I don't know what
I should do — I love you so dreadfully ! I think of you,
and everything about you seems so wondrously beauti-
ful to me!

I almost have a feeling that I have no right to love
you so much. Oh, teU me, do you want me to love you
as I can? Already you seem part of me, mine — ^mine!
And it is wonderful how you help me.

XXIV

Thtesis :

I spent the whole day in the park without a bite to
eat, because I did not want to take the trouble to come
home after it, and I only had five cents. I have tried,
oh, tried to control myself and make myself saner. I
am seized with occasional fits of the horrors, and of wild
cravings for you, until I could scream. It is so un-
bearable, and I almost want to die. Oh, but I do not
want to die ! My imagination has become so fevered in
the last few days — if I do not see you soon, I know not
what will become of me !

I have never loved you so wildly — though I have
always longed for you. I sometimes feel now as if my
brain were utterly wrecked. I know not what is the
matter; I gasp, when I think of you. I am convinced
of heaven and hell almost in the same breath — experi-
ence each in rapid succession. One touch of your hand
and one look, I think would cure me. I seem as if in

THE VICTEVI HESITATES 119

a thunder-storm — ^pitchy blackness with flashes of light
— and in the flashes I see you, my beloved !

XXV

Thtrsis:

I am atrociously weary of being able to depend upon
myself not at all; but oh, how marvellously sweet and
good you are to me ! I shall never be able to pay you
for your help!

Dear Heaven, what a cup of bitterness I have drunk,
since I last saw you! Dearest, you have really torn
me to pieces, unwittingly. But now I am healed, and
I may go on in your blessed sight, with my terrors gone
forever.

And then I actually wonder if you have an earthly
form ! It will be very strange to see you and touch
you, I sometimes wake up with a start at the thought
of it!

XXVI

Thtesis:

Here I am, the most restless and miserable and un-
comfortable and pining of creatures — a very Dido !
Are you satisfied, now that you have made it almost im-
possible for me to put my mind on anything but you,
you ? I spend hours reading one page of my book.

I was reading peaceably just now, and I suddenly
thought how I would feel if I saw you coming in at
the door. I started and could hardly beUeve that I
win really see you — ^in something besides visions. When
night comes I usually get fidgety, and can hardly realize
I do not need to worry over phantoms. Then I go on
with "Classicism and Romanticism in Music," and I

120 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

think of you — and read a line and think of you ! You
see, it doesn't do for me to be too intense, for I just
devour myself, and that is all. My only idea of a vent
is to knock my head against something.

I suppose it is the inevitable result of caring for
someone you cannot see. Here I might be studying
now, but what do I do? I go around seeking rest — and
I write you a dozen times a day, and use up all the
stamps in the house.

Oh well, I dare say if you wished me to love you,
you have accomplished your purpose most successfully.
There is nothing in life but you, and to suddenly
acquire a new self is most startling, and something hard
to believe, Thyrsis, I simply cannot realize that I may
go to you and find peace and security.

XXVII

My deaeest Corydon:

I have just a few words to say. I have two weeks
left in which to shake off my shoulders the fearful
animal that has been tearing me. For just three weeks
to-day, not a line written!

The task seems almost beyond my powers. God,
will people ever know how I have worked over this book !

But unless you develop some new doubt, or I persist
in writing letters, I ought to get it done now. I shall
see you as soon as I have finished, and meantime I shall
write no letters.

xxvin

Deab Thyrsis:

I would give a great deal to let you know how I have
struggled and suffered.

THE VICTIM HESITATES 121

I have had almost more than I could bear — the more
horrible because the more unreasonable. You must
know it. If it disturbs you, please put the letter away
until a favorable time. I account my trouble greatly
physical — I have never been in such a nervous state.
The murky despair that has come over me — that I have
writhed and struggled in, as in the clutches of some
fiend ! It seems to me I have experienced every torment
of each successive stage of Dante's Inferno. I know
what is the emotion of a soul in all the bloom and hope
of youth, condemned to die.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night — and
felt as if a monster sat by to throw a black cloth over
me and smother me. I got up and shook myself, and
my heart was beating violently.

I managed to get myself free. This morning I am
better. God in Heaven only knows — I would rather
be torn limb from limb, yes, honestly, than endure the
blackness of soul that I have had through all these
years of strife and failure by myself.

XXIX

Deaeest Thyesis :

Perhaps if I have written to you a few words, I shall
be able to put my mind on study — as so far I have not
done. I actually to-night have been indulging in all
sorts of romantic moods about you. I felt in a sing-
ing mood, and when I came up from dinner I put on a
beautiful dress, just for fun, and I looked quite radiant.
I dreamed of you, and imagined that you were at my
feet, in true Romeo fashion — and I was your Juliet.
I imagined — I couldn't help thinking of this, and I
knew I ought to be doing something else ! Oh, but how

122 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

I want a poor taste of joy! You were my Romeo to-
night— ^you were beautiful and young and loving; and
well, I had one dream of youth and happiness before
my miseries begin.

I have felt that we were very near to each other
lately. You have shown me the tenderness of your
heart, and I love you quite rapturously. I love your
goodness, your sympathy — perhaps when I see you I
can tell you!

XXX

Deauest Thyesis :

I received a postal just now, saying that you were
coming soon.' I had my usual queer faintness. It was
like receiving word from the dead — it seemed such
centuries — aeons — since I heard from you ! I send you
this batch of notes I have written you at various times,
a sort of mental itinerary, for my mind has traveled
into all sorts of queer places, back and forth. I tell
you that without your continual influence, I am lost
in doubt and uncertainty. Please try to understand
these notes and my fits of love and fear.

XXXI

Dear Thyksis:

I am in one of my cast-iron moods this morning —
in a fighting mood, I do not care with whom or what.
You, even you, have not altogether understood me —
you have often given me a dog's portion. I have been
a slave, a cowering kitten before you, and you (un-
wittingly I know) have done much to destroy all my
courage and hope and love — ^by what you call making
me aware of your higher self. Fortunately I know

THE VICTIM HESITATES 12S

what your higher self is, quite as well as you do, if
not a little better — and I know that it is the self that
most strengthens my love and courage, the self that
most fills me with life. I have a right to life as well
as you, and a right to the love in you that most inspires
me. I feel I am capable of judging this, in spite of
all my lack of education, and my inability to follow
you in your intellectual life.

I have thought lately that you were able to make
yourself believe that you were anything you wished to
think yourself. Whenever you wring my heart and de-
prive me of strength, I shall go somewhere alone, and
■when I have controlled myself, come back to you.

You say you are master — but it must be master of
the right. I want strength, and why you should think
it right ever to have helped to throw me into more
despair, I do not know. The reason I have written all
this is because such ideas have come to me lately, and
a fear that sometimes you might resort to your un-
loving methods, with the thought of its being right. I
• tell you I would rather stay at home, than ever go
through with some of the pangs you have cost me, in
what you called your higher moods. You must not
gainsay me, that I am also capable of respecting high
moods »^|nd bowing before them; but it would seem to
me that they are only high if they are a source of in-
spiration and joy to me.

Because we love each other, would that be any reason
why we must dote upon each other, or sink from our
high resolves.'' I cannot see why our love for each
other should not always be a means of our reaching our
higher selves. You need not answer this letter — ^but
when you come back, tell me whether what I say im-
presses you as being right or wrong — if there is not

124 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

some justification in it. But perhaps I should wait.
I have no right to disturb you now.

XXXII

Thyrsis :

I woke up this morning with the feeling that I did
not love you. That same thing has happened to me
two or three times, and I do not understand it.

It must be because at the present moment you do not
love me ! You are writing your book, and telling your-
self that you cannot love me as you ought! Is this
so.? It is only a surmise on my part, and I do not
know, but I should not be surprised if you were. I
only know that the One thing that can bring us to-
gether is love, and I do not love you now. Perhaps
you can explain it to me. I write this absolutely with-
out emotion.

I tell you there have been things horribly wrong
about you. You have done anything but inspire love
in my heart — you have never seen me with love in my
heart. Until lately, I never have felt any love for
you ; before, I simply compelled myself to think I loved
you, because my life seemed to depend upon it. There
have been many times when, as I look back, yjon seem
to me to have been base.

Well may you preach, while you are alone, and are
monarch of yourself. I shall have to have more of
a chance than has ever come to me, before I will bear
your displeasure or your exhortations. If you come
to me and speak to me of the high, proud self that I
must reach, every vestige of love for you wUl leave
my heart, and I would as soon marry a stone pillar !

Great Heaven, what strange moods I have! I picture

THE VICTIM HESITATES 125

our meeting each other, unmoved by love; you de-
termined, energetic, indifferent to all things, myself
included; and I disappointed, but with a hardness in
my heart — no tears!

I am indulging now in the most lifeless and gloomy
of broodings ; if you do not come back to me, the only
soul I can love, if you are not joyful and strong, sin-
cere, sympathetic, and loving, all of these — I shall know
it is a farce for me to ever hope to gain any life with
you. I do not believe that any woman can grow with-
out love, and a great deal of it. Why do you sup-
pose I am writing all this — I, who have felt such deep
and true love for you? I have no courage— the damp-
ness of the day has settled into my soul — and I shall
be joyless until there is no more cursed doubt of you
and your love for me.

xxxin

Deae Corydon:

Against resolutions, I am writing to you again. I
thought of you — there is a boat up the lake to-day
with some hunters, and if I finish this letter, I can
send it in by them as they pass. I have many things
to tell you, and you must think about them.

This is one of my paralyzing letters. It will reach
you Monday. I can't tell where I may be then. I have
been wrestling with the end of the book, and I am wild
with rage at my impotence. The fact has come to me
that no amount of will is enough, because all my life is
cowardly and false. I have found myself wanting to
aneak through this work, and come home and enjoy
myself; and you can't sneak with God, and that's all.

I cannot come home beaten, and so here I am, stiU

126 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

struggling — and with snow on the ground, and the
shack so cold that I sit half in the fire-place.

I think of you, and at times when my soul is afire, I
imagine I can do anything. I see that you are help-
less, but I think that I can change your whole being,
and make you what I wish. But then that feeling dies
out, and I think of you as you are, and with despair.
I do not allude to any of your "deficiencies" — music,
learning, and other stuff. I mean your life-force, or
your lack of it. I see that you have learned nothing
of the unspeakable, unattainable thing for which I am
panting. And it has come to me that I dare not marry
you, that I should be binding my hfe to ruin. My head
is surging with plans, and a whole infinity of future,
and I simply cannot carry any woman with me on this
journey.

As I say this, I see the tears of despair in your eyes.
I can only tell you what I am — God made me for an
artist, not a lover! I have not deep feelings — I do
not care for human suff'ering; I can work, that is all.
Art is no respecter of persons, and neither am I — I
labor for something which is not of self, and requires
denial of self. And as I think about you, the feeling
comes to me that it is not this you want, that I should
make you utterly wretched if I married you. You love
love; you do not wish to fling yourself into a struggle
such as my life must be. I see that in all your letters
— your terror of this highest self of mine. If you
married me, you would have to fight a battle that
would almost kill you. You would have to wear your
heart out, night and day — you would have to lose
yourself and your feelings — fling away everything,
and live in self-contempt and efi'ort. You would have to
know it — I can't help it — that I love life, and that to

THE VICTIM HESITATES 127

human hearts I owe no allegiance ; that to me they are
simply impatience and vexation.

Do you want such a life? If you can learn to love
it for what it is — a wild, unnatural, but royal life —
very well. If you are coming to me with pleading
eyes, secretly wishing for affection, and in terror of
me when you don't get it, then God help you, that is
all!

You are a child, and you can not dream what I mean.
But every day I learn something more of a great savage
force of mine, that will stand out against the rest of
this world, that is burning me up, that is driving me
mad. One of two things it will do to you — it will make
you the same kind of creature, or it wiU tear the soul
out of you. Do you understand that.? And nothing
will stop it — it cares for nothing in the world but the
utterance of itself ! And if you wish to marry me, it will
be with no promise of mine save to wreak it upon you !
To take you, and make you just such a creature, kill
or cure — ^nothing else ! Not one instant's patience —
but just one insistent, frantic demand that you suc-
ceed— and fiery, writhing disgust with you when you
do not succeed — disgust that wiU make you scream —
and make you live! Do you understand this — and do
you get any idea of the temper behind this.'' And how
it seems to you, I don't know — it is the only kind of
truth I am capable of; I shall simply fling naked the
force of my passionate, raging will, and punish you
with it each instant of your life — ^until you understand
it, and love it, and worship it, as I do.

Now, I don't know what you will think about this
letter — and I don't care. It is here — and you must
take it. It does not come to you for criticism, any
more than it would come for criticism to the world. It

128 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

will rule the world. If I marry you I must live all my
soul before you, and you must share it ; if you think
you can do this without first having suffered, having
first torn loose your own crushed self, you are mistaken.
But remember this — I shall demand from you just as
much fire as I give ; you may say you carvnot, you may
weep and say you cannot — I will gnash my teeth at
you and say you must.

Perhaps I'm a fool to think I can do this. At any
rate, I don't want to do anything else ; I am a fool to
think of doing anything else, and you to let me.

I cannot be false to my art without having a reac-
tion of disgust, and you cannot marry me, unless you
understand that. When I sat down to this letter I
called myself mad for trying to tie my life to yours.
Now I am interested in you again. You may wish to
make this cast still; and oh, of course I shall drop
back as usual, and you'll be happy, and I'll be your
"Romeo" !

Ugh — how I hated that letter! "Romeo" indeed!
Wouldn't we have a fine sentimental time — ^you with
your prettiest dress on, and I holding you in my arms
and telling you how much I loved you !

xxxrv

My deae Thyesis :

I shall be your wife. This thought takes hold of me
firmly and calmly, and I have no tears, nor fright, nor
uncertainty. I suffered, of course, while I read your
letter, and my self-control toppled, but no "tears of
despair" came into my eyes. I am not despairing — I
shall be your wife, and I shall feel that for many years
one of my greatest efforts will be to prevent you from

THE VICTIM HESITATES 129

becoming my "Romeo." I am very weak and human,
and you become that easily — do you know it?

Rejoice, I have gained my self-control, and well, I
am going to be your wife. Or else (it comes to me
quite as a matter of course, without any feeling of it
being unnatural or unusual) I shall not care to live.
But after all, I do not fear that I shall die — I shall be
your wife. You may even gainsay it, you may even
tell me I shall ruin your life, you may even tell me
that you refuse to take me — but sooner or later I shall
be your wife. I say it with perfect certainty, and
almost composure.

It is unfortunate that at such a time as this I can-
not see you — it is quite cruelly wicked. There is so
much to say, not all in your favor either. Some day I
shall learn to bring out and keep before me that higher
self of yours, which now I do not fear. I also have a
higher self, though it does not show itself very often.
It is a self which can meet that self of yours with-
out flinching, but which loves it, and stretches out
its arms to it — which knows that without that self of
yours it cannot, wiR not live. It is hard to realize such
a thing, but I beseech you no longer, I am going with
you. You see now, I have no fear of your not taking
me — I simply have no fear of this.

If I had, I could not write you this way. But you
have been the means of showing me I can awaken, and
that I was not meant to live the life of the people
around me. Chance tried hard to put me to sleep for-
ever, but you have roused me. Dear me, how I smile
to myself at my confidence! But I am so sure — this
feeling would not be in my heart if it had no meaning !
I was not meant for this life I am leading. I am not
afraid because I have no proof that I am a genius, and

130 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

no prospect of being one at present. I do not know
whether what you have must come as an inspiration
direct from God, I do not know whether I am capable
of winning any of this life that you are seeking; but I
do know this — I'm going to have the chance to try,
and you are going to give it to me. Do you suppose I
could tell you that I am willing to stay at home and let
you leave me?

I have not even any fear now of your wishing to leave
me. Why, I wouldn't hold my life at a pennyworth
if you were out of it !

"You are my only means of breathing, you fool,"
I thought. I sometimes wonder how you could think
of leaving me, when I feel as I do at present. I ask
myself why it is that you know nothing of it, and why
it does not make you put out your hand in gladness to
me — ^how you could write me that all my letters showed
you I did not want to struggle to lead your life !

My words are failing me now — this is probably the
reason you know nothing about me.

Besides, when I have written you before this, I have
been worrying and doubting and afraid. I am none
of these now ; and I do not believe I am deluding myself
— in fact I know I am not. / shall be your wife. It is
indeed a pity I cannot talk to you now — ^yes, a very
great pity. It is also rather incomprehensible, that
you can imagine leaving me now. And all my letters
have told you that I wish to be petted and cuddled, did
they? If you were here, I do not know that it would
do any good to give my feelings vent, it would profit
me nothing to strike you, and what could I do? I
cannot hate you — it is not natural that one should
hate one's husband.

THE VICTIM HESITATES 131

Some day, oh, some day, I tell myself — you will no
longer play and trifle with me and my soul !

Did you really think you are going to put me to
sleep again? Surely my hfe is something; and you
have given me some reason for its existence. I can
hardly tell you what I wish to say ; people run in and
out, and I am bothered — I suppose this is one of my
tasks. But do you not see that you have taken the
responsibility of a soul into your hands ? I cannot live
without you. What is it — do creatures go around the
world struggling and saying they must live, and are
they only pitiful fools for trying?

And are you one of God's chosen ones ? Will you tell
me, "Corydon, you simply cannot live my life — you are
not fit?" Dear Thyrsis, I actually believe that if you
should tell me that now, I should laugh with joy, for I
would see that I had gained one victory, that of proving
to you your own weakness and stupidity. And I should
not let you discourage me. I should throw my arms
around your neck, and cling to you until you had
promised to take me. After all, it is a small boon to
ask the privilege of trying to live, it cannot but be
a glory to you to help me; and if I do not make you
waste your time or money, how can I hinder you?

Ask yourself how you have treated me — have I not
suffered a little? Though I may have been miserably
weak, have I not now a little courage? Why do the
moments blind you so, that you can speak to me as
though I were a sawdust doll?

There is only one thing that I will let myself do.
I know that you are strong and brave, and that I can
be if I go with you; and I am going with you — ^there
simply is no other alternative — for I love you! Yes,
dear, I saw it very plainly as I read your letter to-day.

132 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

I seem to feel very differently about it all now. I know
we cannot sit still and love each other — this costs me
no pang. You need not love me one bit ; I may simply
belong to you, we may simply belong to each other.

I see how I fall into blindness of the high things
at home. How almost impossible it is for me to do
anything, while I have the earthly ties of love ! I study
— but how? How is it possible to live the physical life
of other people — to be sympathetic and agreeable and
conciliatory, and gain anything for your own soul.''
How is such a creature as myself to get what it wants,
unless it goes away where there are no contrary and
disturbing influences — where it has no ties, no obliga-
tions? The souls that have won, how did they do it —
did they go alone, or did they stay in the parlor and
serve tea?

Such thoughts as these would make me grovel at your
feet, if need be, in an agony of prayer. The means,
I cry— and you are the means ! What is there for
me, then, but to beseech you to have faith in me? I
suppose, as yet, you have little or no cause — though
once or twice I have risen to you, even though perhaps
you did not know it. I am almost happy now — for
I feel that this useless strife is at an end, this craving
and wondering if you wish to leave me. And for all
that, I despise you, too — for your blind and wanton
cruelty in wishing to crush what you have created!
How do you expect God to value your soul, when you
so lightly value mine?

But after all, will it help me to beseech you? The
thing I honor in you is your desire to be right — and
I know that you will act toward me as your sense of
right prompts you. You will act toward me as you
feel you must do, to be true. Yes, be true to yourself.

THE VICTIM HESITATES 133

please; I am happy to trust in yourself so. If you
believe that I will mar your life, I do not wish to go
with you. I do not know why, but I feel that something
has come to me to prevent my despair from returning ;
I shall take care of my soul — there rrmst be something
for me in this life. I have a feeling that perhaps you
will think I am writing this last mute acceptance of
your will, without knowing what I am doing. But I
know that I shall struggle without you, I shall not die.

And I wish that you would do one thing — see me as
soon as you can ; let it be early in the morning, and it
shall be decided on that day whether I am to marry you
or not. I shall leave you, not to see you again — or
knowing that I am to be your wife. I am sick unto
death of fuming and sighing, tears and fears.

What will you do, Thyrsis.? I cannot write any
more.

I unfold the letter again. What, in the name of God,
are you going to do?

Book IV
THE VICTIM APPROACHES

A silence had fallen upon them. She sat watching
where the light of the sum flickered among the birches;
and he had the book in his hand, and was turning the
pages idly. He read —

"7 know these slopes; who knows them if not I?"

And she smiled, and quoted in return —

"Here cam'st thou in thy jocund youthful time.
Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime!
And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields."

§ 1. It was early one November afternoon, in his
cabin in the forest, that Thyrsis wrote the last of his
minstrel's songs. He had not been able to tell when
it would come to him, so he had made no preparations ;
but when the last word was on the paper, he sprang to
his feet, and strode through the snow-clad forest to
the nearest farm-house. The farmer came with a
wagon, and Thyrsis bundled all his belongings into his
trunk, and took the night-train for the city.

He came like a young god, radiant and clothed in
glory. All the creatures of his dreams were awake
within him, all his demons and his muses ; he had but
to call them and they answered. There was a sound
of trumpets and harps in his soul all day ; he was like a
man half walking, half running, in the midst of a great
storm of wind.

He had fought the good fight, and he had conquered.
The world was at his feet, and he had no longer any
fear of it. The jangling of the street-cars was music
to him, the roar and rush of the city stirred his pulses
— this was the life he had come to shape to his will !

And so he came to Corydon, glorious and irresistible.
His mind was quite made up — he would take her; he
was master now, he had no longer any doubts or fears.
He was thrilled all through him with the thought of
her ; how wonderful it was at such an hour to have
some one to communicate with — some one in whose

137

138 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

features he could see a reflection of his own exaltation !
He recollected the words of the old German poet —

"Der ist selig zu begriissen
Der ein treues Herze weiss !"

He went to Corydon's home. In the parlor he came
upon her unannounced; and she started and stared at
him as at a ghost. She did not make a sound, but he
^aw the pallor sweep over her face, he saw her tremble
and sway. She was like a reed shaken by the wind —
so fragile and so sensitive ! He got a sudden sense of
the storm of emotion that was shaking her ; and it
frightened him, while at the same time it thrilled him
strangely.

He came and took her hands in his, and gently touched
her cheek with his lips. She stared at him dumbly.

"It's all right, sweetheart," he whispered. "It's all
Tight." And she closed her eyes, and it seemed as if
to breathe was all she could do.

"Come, dearest," he said. "Let us go out."

And half in a daze she put on her hat and coat, and
they went out on the street. He took her arm to steady
lier.

"Well?" she asked.

"It's all right, dearest," he said.

"You got my letter.?"

"Yes, I got it. And it was a wonderful letter. It
couldn't have been better."

"Ah!"

"And there's no more to be said. There's no re-
fusing such a challenge. You shall come with me."

"But Thy r sis ! Do you want me to come?"

"Yes," he said, "I want you."

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 139

And he felt a tremor pass through her arm. He
pressed it tightly to his side. "I love you!" he whis-
pered.

"Ah Thyrsis!" she exclaimed. "How you have tor-
tured me!"

"Hush, dear !" he replied. "Let's not think of that.
It's all past now. We are going on ! You have proven
your grit. You are wonderful!"

They went into the park, and sat upon a bench in
the sun.

"I've finished the book!" he said. "And in a couple
more days it'll be copied. I've a letter of introduc-
tion to a publisher, and he wrote me he'd read it at
once."

"It seems like a dream to me," she whispered.

"We won't have to wait long after that," he said.
"Everything will be clear before us."

"And what wiU you do in the meantime?" she asked.

"Mother wants me to stay with her," he said. "I've
only got ten dollars left. But I'll get some from the
publisher."

"Are you sure you can?" she asked.

"Oh, Corydon !" he cried, "you've no idea how wonder-
ful it is — the book, I mean. You'll be amazed ! It kept
growing on me all the time — I got new visions of it.
That was why it took me so long. I didn't dare to
appreciate it, while I was doing it — I had to keep my-
self at work, you know; but now that it's done, I can
realize it. And oh, it's a book the world will heed !"

"When can I see it, Thyrsis?"

"As soon as it's copied — the manuscript is all a
scrawl. But you know the minstrel's song at the end?
My Gethsemane, I called it ! I found a new form for
it — it's all in free verse. I didn't mean it to be that

140 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

way, but It just wrote itself; it broke through the bars
and ran away with me. Oh, it marches like the
thunder !"

He puUed some papers from his coat-pocket. "I
was going over it on the train this morning," he said.
"Listen!"

He read her the song, thrilling anew with the joy
of its effect upon her. "Oh, Thyrsis !" she cried, in
awe. "That is marvellous ! Marvellous ! How could
you do it?"

And yet, for all the delight she expressed, Thyrsis
was conscious of a chiU of disappointment, of a doubt
lurking in the background of his mind. It was inevi-
table, in the nature of things — how could the book
mean to any human creature what it had meant to him ?
Seven long months he had toiled with it, he had been
through the agonies of a child-birth for it. And an-
other person would read it all in one day ! — It was the
old, old agony of the artist, who can communicate so
small a part of what has been in his soul.

§ 2. He wanted to talk about his book, but Cory-
don wanted to talk about him. She had waited so long,
and suffered so much — and now at last he was here!
*'0h, Thyrsis!" she cried. "There's just no use in
my trying — I can't do anything at all without you !"

"You won't have to do it any more," he said. "We
shall not part again."

"And you are sure you want me? You have no more
doubts?"

"How could I have any doubts — after that letter.
Ah, that was a brave letter, Corydon ! It made me think
of you as some old Viking's daughter! That is the
way to go at the task!"

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 141

"And then I may feel certain !" she said.

"You may stop thinking all about it," he replied.
"We'll waste no more of our time — we'll put it aside
and get to work."

They spent the day wandering about in the park
and talking over their plans. "I suppose it'll be all
right now that I'm with you," said Thyrsis. "I mean,
there's no great hurry about getting married."

"Oh, no !" she answered. "We dare not think of that,
until you have money."

"How I wish we didn't have to get married!" he ex-
claimed.

"Why.?" she asked.

"Because — why should we have to get anybody else's
permission to live our lives.'' I've thought about it a
good deal, and it's a slave-custom, and it makes me
ashamed of myself."

"But don't you believe in marriage, dear?"

"I do, and I don't. I believe that a man who ex-
poses a woman to the possibility of having a child,
ought to guarantee to support the woman for a time,
and to support the child. That's obvious enough — no
one but a scoundrel would want to avoid it. But mar-
riage means so much more than that ! You bind your-
self to stay together, whether love continues or whether
it stops ; you can't part, except on some terms that
other people set down. You have to make all sorts of
promises you don't intend to keep, and to go through
forms you don't believe in, and it seems to me a cowardly
thing to do."

"But what else can one do ?" asked Corydon.

"It's quite obvious what we could do. We don't
intend to be husband and wife ; and so we could simply
go away and go on with our work."

142 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"But think of our parents, Thyrsis!"

"Yes, I know — I've thought of them. But if every
one thought of his parents, how would the world ever
move?"

"But, dearest!" exclaimed Corydon, "if we didn't
marry, they'd simply go out of their senses!"

"I know. But then, they might threaten to go out
of their senses if we did marry.'' And would that work
also.?"

"We must be sensible," said the girl. "It means so
much to them, and so little to us."

"Yes, I suppose so," he answered. "But all the
same, I hate it; when you once begin conforming, you
never know where you'll stop."

"We shall know," declared the other. "Whatever we
may have to do to get married, we shall both of us
know that neither would ever dream of wishing to hold
the other for a moment after love had ceased. And
that is the essential thing, is it not.'"'

"Yes," assented Thyrsis. "I suppose so."

"Well, then, we'll make that bargain between us;
that will be our marriage."

"That suits me better," he replied.

She thought for a moment, and then said, with a
laugh, "Let us have a little ceremony of our own."

"Very well," said he.

"Are you ready for it now.'"' she inquired. "Your
mind is quite made up ?"

"Quite made up."

She looked about her, to make sure that no one was
in sight ; and then she put her hand in his. "I have
been to weddings," she said. "And so I know how they
do it. — I take thee, Thyrsis, to be the companion of
my soul. I give myself to thee freely, for the sake of

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 143

love, and I will stay so long as thy soul is better with
me than without. But if ever this should cease to be,
I will leave thee; for if my soul is weaker than thine,
I have no right to be thy mate."

She paused. "Is that right.?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, "that is right."

"Very well then," she said; "and now, you say it!"

And she made him repeat the words — "I take thee,
Corydon, to be the companion of my souL I give my-
self to thee freely, for the sake of love, and I wiU stay
so long as thy soul is better with me than without. But
if ever this should cease to be, I will leave thee; for
if my soul is weaker than thine, I have no right to be
thy mate."

"Now," she exclaimed, with an eager laugh — "now
we're married!" And as he looked he caught the glint
of a tear in her eyes.

§ 3. But the world would not be content to leave
it on that basis. When they parted that afternoon,
it was with a carefully-arranged program of work —
they were to visit each other on alternate days and go
on with their German and music. But in less than a
week they had run upon an obstruction ; there was no
quiet room for them at Corydon's save her bedroom,
and one evening when Thyrsis came, she made the an-
nouncement that they could no longer study there.

"Why not.?" he asked.

"Well," explained Corydon, "they say the maid might
think it wasn't nice."

She had expected him to fly into a rage, but he only
smiled grimly. "I had come to tell you the same sort
of thing," he explained. "It seems you can't visit me

144 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

so often, and you're never to stay after ten o'clock at
night."

"Why is that?" she inquired.

"It's a question of what the hall-boy might think,"
said he.

They sat gazing at each other in silence. "You see,"
said Thyrsis, at last, "the thing is impossible — we've
got to go and get married. The world will never give
us any peace until we do."

"Nobody has any idea of what we mean !" exclaimed
Corydon.

"No idea whatever," he said. "They've nothing in
them in anyway to correspond with it. You talk to them
about souls, and they haven't any. You talk to them
about love, and .they think you mean obscenity. Every-
body is thinking obscenity about us !"

"Everybody but our parents," put in Corydon.

To which he answered, angrily, "They are thinking
of what the others are thinking."

But everybody seemed to have to think something,
and that was the aspect of the matter that puzzled
them most. Why did everybody find it necessary to
be thinking about it at all? Why did everybody con-
sider it his business? As Thyrsis phrased it — "Why
the hell can't they let us alone?"

"We've got to get married," said she. "That's the
only way to get the best of them."

"But is that really getting the best of them?" he ob-
jected. "Isn't that their purpose — to make us get
married?"

This was a pregnant question, but they did not fol-
low it up just then. They went on to the practical
problem of where and when and how to accomplish their
purpose.

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 145

"We can go to a court," said he.

"Oh, no !" she exclaimed. "We'd have to meet a lot
of men, and I couldn't stand it."

"But surely you don't want to go to a church!" he
said.

"Couldn't we get some clergyman to marry us
quietly.'"'

"But then, there's a lot of rigmarole!"

"But mightn't he leave it out.!"' she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "They generally believe in
it, you see."

He decided to make an attempt, however.

"Let's go to-morrow morning," he said. "I'm going
over to have the sound-post set in my violin, and that'll
take an hour or so. Perhaps we can finish it up in the
meantime."

"A good idea," said Corydon. "It'll give me to-night
to tell mother and father."

§ 4. So behold them, the next morning, emerging
from the little shop of the vioHn-dealer, and seeking
for some one to fasten them in the holy bonds of mat-
rimony! They were walking down a great avenue, and
there were many churches — ^but they were aU rich
churches. "I never thought about it before," said
Thyrsis. "But I wonder if there are any poor churches
in the city!"

They stopped in front of one brown-stone structure
that looked a trifle less elaborate. "It says Presby-
terian," said Corydon, reading the sign. "I wonder
how they do it."

"I don't know," said he. "But he'd want a lot of
money, I'm sure."

"But mightn't he have a curate, or something?"

146 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"Goose," laughed Thyrsis, "there are no Presbyterian
curates !"

"Well, you know what I mean," she said — "an as-
sistant, or an apprentice, or something."

"I don't know," said he. "Let's go and ask."

So, with much trepidation, they rang the bell of the
parsonage on the side-street. But the white-capped
maid who answered told them that the pastor was not
in, and that there were no curates or apprentices about.

They went on.

"How much do you suppose they charge, anyway?"
asked Thyrsis.

"I don't know — I think you give what you can spare.
How much money have you?"

"I've got eight dollars to my name."

"Have you got it with you?"

"Yes— all of it."

"I get my twenty-five to-morrow," she added.

"Do you really get it?" he asked. "You can depend
on it?"

"Oh yes — it comes the middle of each month."

"I've heard of people getting incomes from invest-
ments, and things like that, but it always seemed hard
to believe. I never thought I'd meet with it in my own
life."

"It's certainly very nice," said Corydon.

"Where does it come from?"

"There's a trustee of the estate who sends it. It's
Mr. Hammond."

"That bald-headed man I met once?"

"Yes, he's the one. He's quite a well-known lawyer,
and they say I'm fortunate to have him."

"I see," said Thyrsis. "I'll have to look into it some

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 147

day. You know you have to endow me with all your
worldly goods!"

They went on down the avenue, and came to a Jewish
temple with a gUded dome. "I wonder how that would
do," said Corydon.

"I don't think it would do at all," said Thyrsis.
'•We'd surely have to believe something there."

So they went on again. And on a comer, as they
stopped to look about them, a strange mood came sud-
denly to Thyrsis. It was as if a veil was rent before
him — as if a bolt of lightning had flashed. What was
he going to do ? He was going to bind himself in mar-
riage ! He was going to be trapped — ^he, the wild thing,
the young stag of the forest!

"What is it.''" asked Corydon, seeing him standing
motionless.

"I — I was just thinking," he said.

♦'What.?"

"I was afraid, Corydon, I wondered if we were sure
— ^if we realized "

"If we realized!" she cried.

"You know — it'll be forever "

"Why, Thyrsis!" she exclaimed, in horror.

And so he started, and laughed uneasily. "It was
just a queer fancy that came to me," he said.

"But how could you !" she cried.

*'Come, dearest," he said, hurriedly — "it's nothing.
It seems so strange, that's all."

In the middle of the block they came to another
church. "Unitarian !" he exclaimed. "Oh, maybe that's
just the thing !"

And so they went in, and found a friendly clergyman,
Dr. Hamilton by name, to whom they explained their
plight. They answered his questions — yes, they were

148 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

both of age, and they had told their parents. Also,
with much stammering, Thyrsis explained that his
worldly goods amounted to eight dollars.

"But — ^how are you going to live?" asked Dr. Hamil-
ton.

Thyrsis was tempted to mention the masterpiece, but
he decided not to. "I'm going to earn money," he
said.

"Well," responded the other, "I suppose it's all
right. I'll marry you."

And so the sexton was called in for a witness, and the
clergyman stood before them and made a little speech,
and said a prayer, and then joined their hands to-
gether and pronounced the speU. The two trembled
just a little, but answered bravely, "I do," in the proper
places, and then it was over. They shook hands with
the doctor, and promised to come hear one of his ser-
mons ; and with much trepidation they paid him two
dollars, which he in turn paid to the sexton. And then
they went outside, and drew a great breath of relief.
"It wasn't half as bad as I expected," the bridegroom
confessed.

§ 5. Thtesis invested in a newspaper, and as they
went back to get the viohn they read the advertise-
ments of furnished rooms. In respectable neighbor-
hoods which they tried they found that the prices were
impossible . for them ; but at last, upon the edge of a
tenement district, they found a comer flat-house, with
a saloon underneath, where there were two tiny bed-
rooms for rent in an apartment. The woman, who was
a seamstress, was away a good deal in the day, and
Corydon learned with delight that she might use the
piano in the parlor. The rooms were the smallest they

THE A ICTIM APPROACHES 149

had ever seen, but they were clean, and the price was
only fifty cents a day — a dollar and a half a week fm-
Thyrsis' and two dollars for Corydon's, because there
was a steam-radiator in it.

There was a racket of school-children and of street-
cars from the avenue below, but they judged they would
get used to this ; and having duly satisfied the land-
lady that they were married, and having ascertained
that she had no objection to "light housekeeping," they
engaged the rooms and paid a week's rent in advance.

"That leaves us two and a half to start life on !" said
Thyrsis, when they were on the street again. "Our
housekeeping will be light indeed !"

They walked on, and sat down in the park to talk
it over.

"It's not nearly so reckless as it would seem," he
argued. "For I have to earn money for myself any-
how. And then there's the book."

"When will you hear about it?"

"I called the man up the day before yesterday. He
said they were reading it."

"Have you said anything to him about money?"

"Not yet."

"WiU they pay something in advance?"

"They will, I guess, if they like the story. I don't
know very much about the business end of it."

"We mustn't let them take advantage of us !" ex-
claimed Corydon.

"No, of course not. But I hate to have to think
about the money side of it. It's a cruel thing that I
have to sell my inspiration."

"What else could you do?" she asked.

"It's something I've thought a great deal about,"
said he. "It kept forcing itself upon me all the time I

150 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

was writing. Here I am with my vision — working day
and night to make something beautiful and sacred,
something without taint of self. And I have to take it to
business-men, who will go out into the market-place and
sell it to make money! It wiU come into competition
with thousands of other books — and the publishers
shouting their virtues like so many barkers at a fair.
I can hardly bear to think of it; I'd truly rather live
in a garret all my days than see it happen. I don't
want the treasures of my soul to be hawked on the
streets."

"But how else could people get them.""' asked Cory-
don.

"I would like to have a publishing-house of my own,
and to print my books with good paper and strong
bindings that would last, and then sell them for just
what they cost. So the whole thing would be con-
sistent, and I could tell the exact truth about what I
wrote. For I know the truth about my work; I've
no vanities, I'd be as remorseless a critic of myself
as Shelley was. I'd be willing to leave it to time for
my real friends to find me out — I'd give up the de-
partment-store public to the authors who wanted it.
And then, too, I could sell my books cheaply, so that
the poor could get them. I always shudder to think
that the people who most need what I write will have it
kept away from them, because I am holding it back to
make a profit !"

"We must do that some day !" declared Corydon.

"We must live very simply," he said, "so we can be-
gin it soon. Perhaps we can do it with the money we
get from this first book. We could get everything we
need for a thousand dollars a year, and save the bal-

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 151

The other assented to this.

"I've got the prospectus of my publishing-house all
written," Thyrsis went on. "And I've several other
plans worked out — people would laugh if they saw them,
I guess. But before I get through, I'm going to have
a reading-room where anyone can come and get my
books. It'll be down where the poor people are; and
I'm going to have travelling libraries, so as to reach
people in the country. That is the one hope for better
things, as I see it — we must get ideas to the people !"

Thus discoursing, they strolled back to the home of
Thyrsis' mother, and he went in to get his belongings
together. Corydon went with him ; and as they entered,
the mother said, "There's an express package for you."

So Thyrsis went to his room, and saw a flat package
lying on the bed. He stared at it, startled, and then
picked it up and read the label upon it. "Why —
why ! — " he gasped ; and then he seized a pair of scissors
and cut the string and opened it. It was his manu-
script !

With trembling fingers he turned it over. There was
a letter with it, and he snatched it up. "We regret," it
read, "that we cannot make you an offer for the publi-
cation of your book. Thanking you for the privilege
of examining it, we are very truly yours." And that
was all!

"They've rejected the book !" gasped Thyrsis ; and
the two stared at each other with consternation and
horror in their eyes.

That was a possibility that had never occurred to
Thyrsis in his wildest moment. That anyone in his
senses could reject that book! That anyone could read
a. single chapter of it and not see what it was !

"They only had it five days !" he exclaimed ; and in-

152 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

stantly an explanation flashed across his mind. "I
don't believe they read it!" he cried. "I don't be-
lieve they ever looked at it!"

But, read or unread, there was the manuscript — re-
jected. There was no appeal from the decision ; there
was no explanation, no apology — they had simply re-
jected it! It was like a blow in the face to Thy r sis;
he felt like a woman whose love is spurned.

"Oh the fools ! The miserable fools !" he cried.

But he could not bring much comfort to his soul
by that method. The seriousness of it remained. The
publishing-house was one of the largest and most pros-
perous in the country ; and if they were fools, how many
more fools might there not be among those who stood
between him and the public? And if so, what would he
do?

§ 6. So these two began their life under the shadow
of a cloud. At the very first hour, when they should
have been all rapture, there had come into the chamber
of their hearts this grisly spectre — that was to haunt
them for so many years !

But they clenched their hands .grimly, and put the
thought aside, and moved their worldly goods to the two
tiny rooms. When they had got their trunks in, there
was no place to sit save on the beds ; and though Cory-
don had cast away all superfluities for this pilgrimage,
still it was a puzzle to know where to put things.

But what of that — they were together at last ! What
an ecstasy it was to be actually unpacking, and to be
mingling their eff'ects ! A kind of symbol it was of their
spiritual union, so that the most commonplace things
became touched with meaning. Thyrsis thrilled when
the other brought in an armful of books to him — all

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 153

this wealth was to be added to his store ! He owned no
books himself, save a few text-books, and some volumes
of poetry that he knew by heart. Other books he had
borrowed all his life from libraries; and he often
thought with wonder that there were people who would
pay a dollar or two for a book which they did not mean
to read but once !

Also there were a hundred trifles which came from
Corydon's trunk, and which whispered of the intimacies
of her life; the pictures she put upon her bureau, the
sachet-bags that went into the drawer, the clothing she
hung behind the door. It disturbed him strangely to
realize how close she was to be to him from now on.

And then, the excursion to the corner-grocery, and
the delight of the plunge into housekeeping ! A pound
of butter, and some salt and pepper, and a bunch of
celery ; a box of "chipped beef", and a dozen eggs, and
a quart of potatoes ; and then to the baker's, for rolls
and sponge-cakes — did ever a grocer and a baker sell
such ecstasies before.'' They carried it all home, and
while Corydon scrubbed the celery in the bath-room,
Thyrsis got out his chafing-dish and set the beef and
eggs to sizzling, and they sat and sniffed the delicious
odors, and meantime munched at roUs and butter, be-
cause they were so hungry they could not wait.

What an Elysian festivity they made of it! And
then to think that they would have three such picnics
every day ! To be sure, the purchases had taken one
half of Thyrsis' remaining capital; but then, was it
not just that spice of danger that gave the keen edge
to their delight.'' What was it that made the sense of
snugness and intimacy in their little retreat, save the
knowledge of a cold and hostile world outside.?

The next morning Thyrsis took his manuscript to

154 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

another publisher, and then they went at their work.
Corydon laughed aloud with delight as they began the
German — for what were all its terrors now, when she
had Thyrsis for a dictionary! They fairly romped
through the books. In the weeks that followed they
read "Werther" and "Wilhelm Meister" and "Wahlver-
wandschaften" ; they read "Undine" and "Peter Schle-
mil" and the "Leben eines Taugenichts" ; they read
Heine's poems, and Auerbach's and Freitag's novels,
and Wieland's "Oberon" — is there anybody in Germany
who still reads Wieland's "Oberon ?" Surely there must
somewhere be young couples who delight in "Der Trom-
peter von Sekkingen," and laugh with delight over "der
Kater Hidigeigei !"

Also they went at music. Corydon had been taught
to play as many "pieces" as the average American
young lady ; but Thyrsis had tried to persuade her to
a new and desperate emprise — he insisted that there was
nothing to music until one had learned to read it at
sight. So now, every day when their landlady had
gone out, he moved his music-stand into the little par-
lor, and they went at the task. Thyrsis proposed to
achieve it by a tour de force — the way to read German
was to read it, and the way to read music was to read
music. He would set up a piece they had never seen
before, and they would begin ; and he would pound out
the time with his foot, and make Corydon keep up with
him — even though she was only able to get one or two
notes in each bar, stiU she must keep up with him. At
first this was agony to her — she wanted to linger and
get some semblance of the music; but Thyrsis would
scold and exhort and shout, and pound out the time.

And so, to Corydon's own amazement, it was not
many weeks before she found that she was actually read-

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 165

ing music, that they were playing it together. In this
way they learned Haydn's and Mozart's sonatas, they
even adventured Beethoven's trios, with the second violin
left out. Then Thyrsis subscribed to a music-library,
and would come home twice a week with an armful of
new stuff, good and bad. And whenever in all their
struggles with it they were able to achieve anything
that really moved them as music, what a rapture it
brought them!

§ 7. This was indeed the nearest they could ever
come to creative achievement together ; this was the one
field in which their abilities were equal. In all other
things there were disharmonies — they came upon many
reefs and shoals in these uncharted matrimonial seas.

Thyrsis was swift and impatient, and had flung away
all care about external things ; and here was Corydon,
a woman, with all a woman's handicaps and disabilities.
She was like a little field-mouse in her care of her per-
son— she must needs scrub herself minutely every morn-
ing, and have hot water for her face every night; her
hair had to be braided and her nails had to be cared
for — and oh, the time it took her to get her clothes on,
or even to get ready for the street! She would strug-
gle like one possessed to accompKsh it more quickly,
while Thyrsis chafed and growled and agonized in the
next room. There was nothing he could do meantime —
for were they not going to do everything together.?

Then there was another stumbling-block — the news-
papers ! Thyrsis had to know what was going on in the
world. He had learned to read the papers and maga-
zines like an exchange-editor; his eye would fly from
column to column, and he would rip the insides out of
one in two or three minutes. To Corydon it was agony

156 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

to see him do this, for it topk her half an hour to
read a newspaper. She besought him to read it out
loud — and was powerless to understand the distress
that this caused him. He stood it as long as he could,
and then he took to marking in the papers the things
that she needed to know; and this he continued to do
religiously, until he had come to realize that Corydon
never remembered anything that she read in the papers.

This was something it took him years to compre-
hend ; there were certain portions of the ordinary human
brain which simply did not exist in his wife. She had
lived eighteen years in the world, and it had never
occurred to her to ask how steam made an engine go,
or what was the use of the little glass knobs on the
telegraph-poles. And it was the same with politics
and business, and with the thousand and one personali-
ties of the hour. When these things came up, Thyrsis
would patiently explain to her what she needed to know ;
and he would take it for granted that she would pounce
upon the information and stow it away in her mind —
just as he would have done in a similar case. But then,
two or three weeks later, the same topic would come
up, and he would see a look of sudden terror come
into Corydon's eyes — she had forgotten every word of
it!

He came, after a long time, to honor this ignorance.
People had to bring some real credentials with them to
win a place in Corydon's thoughts ; it was not enough
that they were conspicuous in the papers. And it was
the same with facts of all sorts; science existed for
Corydon only as it pointed to beauty, and history ex-
isted only as it was inspiring. They read Green's
"History of the English People" in the evenings; and
every now and then Corydon would have to go and

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 157

plunge he^ face into cold water to keep her eyes open.
The long parliamentary struggle was utter confusion
to her — she had no joy to watch how "freedom slowly
broadens down from precedent to precedent." But
once in a while there would come some story, like that
of Joan of Arc — and there would be the girl, with her
hands clenched, and hot tears in her eyes, and the fires
of martyrdom blazing in her soul !

These were the hours which revealed to Thyrsis the
treasure he had won — the creature of pure beauty whose
heart was in his keeping. He was humbled and afraid
before her; but the agony of it was that he could not
dwell in those regions of joy with her — he had to know
about stupid things and vulgar people, he had to go
out among them to scramble for a living. So there had
to be a side to his mind that Corydon could not share.
And it did not suffice just to tolerate the existence of
such things — he had to be actively interested in them,
and to take their point of view. How else could he
hold his place in the world, how could he win in the
struggle for life?

This, he strove to persuade himself, was the one
real diflSculty between them, the one thing that marred
the perfection of their bliss. But as time went on, he
came to suspect that there was something else — some-
thing even more vital and important. It seemed to him
that he had given up that which was the chief source of
his power — his isolation. The center of his conscious-
ness had been shifted outside of himself ; and try as he
would, he could never get it back. Where now were
the hours and hours of silent brooding.'' Where were
the long battles in his own soul? And what was to take
the place of them — could conversation do it, conversa-
tion no matter how interesting and worth while?

158 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Thyrsis had often quoted a saying of Emerson's, that
"people descend to meet." And when one was married,
did not one have to descend all the time?

He reasoned the matter out to himself. It was not
Corydon's fault, he saw clearly ; it would have been the
same had he married one of the seraphim. He did not
want to live the life of any seraph — ^he wanted to live
his own life. And was it not obvious that the mere
physical proximity of another person kept one's atten-
tion upon external things.? Was not one inevitably
kept aware of trivialities and accidents? Thyrsis had
an ideal, that he should never permit an idle word to
pass his lips ; and now he saw how inevitably the com-
mon-place crept in upon them — ^how, for instance, their
conversation had a way of turning to personality and
jesting. Corydon was sensitive to external things, and
•she kept him aware of the fact that his trousers were
frayed and his hair unkempt, and that other people
were remarking these things.

I Such was marriage; and it made all the more differ-
ence to an author, he reasoned, because an author was
always at home. Thyrsis had been accustomed, when he
opened his eyes in the morning, to lie still and let images
and fancies come trooping through his mind ; he would
plan his whole day's work in that way, while his fancy
was fresh and there was nothing to disturb him. But
now he had to get up and dress, thus scattering these
visions. In the same way, he had been wont to walk
and meditate for hours ; but now he never walked alone.
That meant incidentally that he no longer got the exer-
cise he needed — because Corydon could never walk at
his pace. And if this was the case with such external
things, how much more was it the case with the strange
impulses of his inmost soul! Thyrsis was now like a

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 159

hunter, who starts a deer, and instead of putting spurs
to his horse and following it, has to wait to summon
a companion — and meanwhile, of course, the deer is
gone!

From all this there was but one deliverance for them,
and that was music. Music was their real interest,
music was their religion; and if only they could go on
and grow in it — if only they could acquire technique
enough to live their lives in it! This would take years,
of course ; but they did not mind that, they were willing
to work every day until they were exhausted — if only
the world would give them a chance! But alas, the
world did not seem to be minded that way.

§ 8. Thyrsis had waited a week, and then written
the second publisher, and received a reply to the effect
that at least two weeks were needed for the consideration
of a manuscript. And meantime his last penny was
gone, and he was living on Corydon's money. It was
clear that he must earn something at once; and so he
had to leave her to study and practice in her own room,
while he cudgelled his brains and tormented his soul
with hack-work.

He tried his verses again ; but he found that the
spring had dried up in him. Life was now too sombre
a thing, the happy spontaneous jingles came no more.
And what he did by main force of will sounded hollow
and vapid to him — and must have sounded so to the
editors, who sent them back.

Then he tried book-reviewing; but oh, the ghastly
farce of book-reviewing! To read futile writing and
sham writing of a hundred degrading varieties — and
never dare to utter a truth about them ! To labor in-
stead to put one's self in the place of the school-girl

160 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

reader and the tired shop-clerk reader and the senti-
mental married-woman reader, and imagine what they
would think about the book, and what they would like
to have said about it ! To take these little pieces of
dishonesty to an office, and sit by trembling while they
were read, and receive two dollars apiece for them if
they were published, and nothing at all if one had been
so lacking in cunning as to let the editor think that the
book was not worth the space !

However, Thyrsis had cunning enough to earn the
cost of his room and his food for two weeks more.
Then one day the postman brought him a letter, the
inscription of which made his heart give a throb. He
ripped the envelope open and read a communication
from the second publisher:

"We have been interested in your manuscript, and
while we do not feel that we can undertake its publica-
tion, we should like an opportunity to talk with you
about it."

"What does that mean.'"' asked Corydon, trembling.

"God knows," he answered. "I'U go and see them
this morning."

When he came back, it was to sink into a chair and
stare in front of him with a savage frown. "Don't ask
me!" he said, to Corydon. "Don't ask!"

"Please tell me !" cried the girl. "Did you see them ?"

"Yes," said Thyrsis — "I saw a fat man !"

"A fat man !"

"Yes — a fat man. A fat body, and a fat mind, and a
fat soul."

"Please tell me, Thyrsis !"

"He said my book wouldn't sell, because the public
had got tired of that sort of thing."

"That sort of thing!"

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 161

"It seems that people used to buy 'historical ro-
mances', and now they've stopped. The man actually
thought my book was one of that kind !"

"I see. But then — couldn't you tell him?"

"I told him. I said, 'Can't you see that this book is
original — that it's come out of a man's heart?' 'Yes,'
he said, 'perhaps. But you can't expect the public to
see it.' And so there you are !"

Thyrsis sat with his nails dug into his palms. "It's
just like the book-reviews !" he cried. "He knows bet-
ter, but that doesn't count — he's thinking about the
public! And he's got to the point where he doesn't
really care — he's a fat man !"

"And so he'll not pubhsh the book?"

"He'll not have anything more to do with me. He
hates me."

''Hates you?"

"Yes. Because I have faith, and he hasn't ! Because
I wouldn't stoop to the indignity he offered!"

"What did he offer?"

"He says that what the public's reading now is
society novels — stories about up-to-date people who are
handsome and successful and rich. They want auto-
mobiles and theatre-parties and country-clubs in their
novels."

"But Thyrsis ! You don't know anything about such
things !"

"I know. But he said I could find out. And so I
could. The point he made was that I've got passion
and color — ^I could write a moving love-story ! In other
words, I could use my ecstasy to describe two society-
people mating !"

There was a pause. "And what did you do with the
manuscript?" asked Corydon, in a low voice.

162 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"I took it to another publisher," he answered.

"And what are you going to do now?"

"I've been to see the editor of the 'Treasure Chest.' "

The "Treasure Chest" was a popular magazine of
fiction, a copy of which Thyrsis had seen lying upon
the table of their landlady. He had glanced through
the first story, and had declared to Corydon that if he
had a stenographer he could talk such a story at the
rate of twenty thousand words a day.

"And did the editor see you?"

"Yes. He's a big husky 'advertising man' — he looks
like a prize-fighter. He said if I could write, to go
ahead and prove it. He pays a cent for five words —
a hundred dollars for a complete serial. He pays on
acceptance; and he said he'd read a scenario for me.
So I'm going to try it."

"What's it to be about?" asked Corydon.

"I'm going to try what they call a 'Zenda' story,"
said Thyrsis. "The editor says the readers of the
'Treasure Chest' haven't got tired of 'Zenda' stories."

And so Thyrsis spent the afternoon and evening
wandering about in the park; and sometime after mid-
night he wrote out his scenario. The advantage of a
"Zenda" story was that, as the adventures happened
in an imaginary kingdom, there would be no need to
study up "local color"- As for the conventional arti-
ficial dialect, he could get it from any of the "ro-
mances" in the nearby circulating library. He did not
dare to take the scenario the next day, but waited a
decent interval ; and when he returned it was to , re-
port that the story was considered to be promising, and
that he was to write twenty thousand words for a
test.

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 163

§ 9. So Thyrsis shut himself up and went to work.
Sometimes he wrote with rage seething in his heart, and
sometimes with laughter on his lips. This latter was
the case when he did the love-scenes — ^because of the
"passion and color" he bestowed upon the fascinating
countess and the clever young American engineer. He
could have written the twenty thousand words in three
days ; but he waited ten days, so that the editor might
not think that he was careless. And three days later
he went back for the verdict.

The editor said it was good, and that if the rest was
like it he would accept the story. So Thyrsis went to
work again, and finished the manuscript, and put it
away until time enough had elapsed. And meanwhile
came a letter from the literary head of the third pub-
lishing-house, regretting that he could not accept the
book.

It was such a friendly letter that Thyrsis went to
call there, and met a pleasant and rather fine-souled
gentleman, Mr. Ardsley by name, who told him a little
about the problems he faced in life.

"You have a fine talent," he said — "you may even
have genius. Your book is obviously sincere — it's vecu,
as the French say. I suspect you must have been in
love when you wrote it."

"In a way," said Thyrsis, flushing slightly. He had
not intended that to show.

The other smiled. "It's overwrought in places," he
went on, "and it tends to incoherency. But the main
trouble is that it's entirely over the heads of the public.
They don't know anything about the kind of love you're
interested in, and they'd laugh at it."

"But then, what am I to do.f"' cried Thyrsis.

164 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"You'll simply have to keep on trying, till you hap-
pen to strike it."

"But — ^how am I to live?"

"^Ah," said Mr. Ardsley, '-that is the problem." He
smiled, rather sadly, as he sat watching the lad. "You
see how Fve solved it," he went on. "I was young once
myself, and I tried to write novels. And in those days
I blamed the publishers — ^I thought they stood in my
way. But now, I see how it is ; a publisher is engaged
in a highly competitive business, and he barely makes
interest on his capital ; he can't afford to publish books
that won't pay their way. Here am I, for instance —
it's my business to advise this house; and if I advise
them wrongly, what becomes of me.? If I take them
your manuscript and say, 'It's a real piece of work,'
they'll ask me, 'Will it pay its way?' And I have to
answer them, 'I don't think it will.' "

"But such things as they pubhsh!" exclaimed the
boy. wildly.

And Mr. Ardsley smiled again. "Yes," he said. ''But
they pay their way. In fact, they save the business."

So Thyrsis went out. He saw quite clearly now the
simple truth — it was not a matter of art at all, but
a matter of business. It was a business-world, and not
an art-world; and he — ^poor fool — was trying to be
an artist !

For three days more he toiled at his pot-boiler ; and
then, late at night, he went out to get some fresh air,
and to try to shake off the load of despair that was
upon him. And so came the explosion.

Perhaps it was because the wind was blowing, and
Thyrsis loved the wind; it was a mirror of his own
soul to him, incessant and irresistible and • mysterious.
And so his demons awoke again. He had gone through

THE VICTIM APPROACHES 165

all that labor, he had built up all that glory in his
spirit — and it was all for naught! He had made him-
self a flame of desire — and now it was to be smothered
and stifled!

He had written his book, and it was a great book,
and they knew it. But all they told him was to go and
write another book — and to do pot-boilers in the mean-
time! But that was impossible, he could not do it.
He would win with the book he had written ! He would
make them hear him — he would make them read that
book!

He began to compose a manifesto to the world ; and
towards morning he came home and shut himself in and
wrote it. He called it "Business and Art;" and in it
he told about his book, and how he had worked over it.
He told, quite frankly, what the book was ; and he asked
if there was anywhere in the United States a publisher
who published books because they were noble, and not
because they sold; or if there was a critic, or book-
lover, or philanthropist, or a person of any sort, who
would stand by a true artist. "This artist will work
all day and nearly all night," he wrote, "and he wants
less than the wages of a day-laborer. All else that ever
comes to him in his life he will give for a chance to
follow his career!"

Then Corydon awoke, and he read it to her. She
listened, thrilling with amazement.

"Oh, Thyrsis !" she cried. "What are you going to
do with it.?"

"I'm going to have it printed," he said, "and send
it to all the publishers ; and also to literary men and
to magazines."

"And are you going to sign your name to it?" she
cried.

166 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"I've already signed my name to it," he answered.

"And when are you going to do it?"

"As soon as the book comes back from the next
publisher."

Then he sat down to breakfast; and afterwards,
without resting, he finished the pot-boiler, and took it
to the editor. After a due interval he went again,
trembling and faint with anxiety. He had sold only
one book-review, and he was using Corydon's money
again. People who hated him had predicted that he
would do just that, and he had answered that he would
die first !

He came home, radiant with delight. "He says he'll
take it!" he proclaimed. "Only I've got to do a new
ending for the fourth installment — he wants something
more exciting. So I'm going to have the countess
caught in a burning tower !"

And he wrote that, and went yet again, and came
home with a hundred dollars buttoned tightly in his
inside vest-pocket. He was like a man who has es-
caped from a dungeon. The field was clear before him
at last ! His manifesto was going out to the world !

Book V
THE BAIT IS SEIZED

They sat, gazing down the dope of the little vale.
She was turning idly the pages of the book, and the
read to him —

'Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night! —
Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power

Befalls me wandering through this upland dim.
Once passed I blindfold here, at any hour;

Now seldom come I, since I came with him."

"It was here we first read the poem," he said.
"Every spot brings back some line of it."

"Even the old oak-tree where we used to sit," she
smiled

"Hear it, 0 Thyrsis, stiU our tree is there!"

§ 1. Thyrsis was half hoping that the next pub-
lisher would decline the manuscript; and he was only
mildly stirred when he got a letter saying that although
the publisher could not make an offer for the book,
one of his readers was so much interested in it that
he would like to have a talk with the author. Thyrsis
replied that he was willing; and to his surprise he
learned that the reader was none other than that Prof.
Osborne, who in the university had impressed upon
him his ignorance of the art of writing.

He paid a call at the professor's home, and they
had a long talk. There was nothing said about their
former interview. Evidently the other recognized that
Thyrsis had succeeded in making good his claim to
be allowed to hew his own way ; and Thyrsis was content
with that tacit surrender.

They talked about the book. The professor first
assured him that it would not sell, and then went on
to explain to him why ; and so they came to a grapple.

"The thing is sincere, perhaps even exalted," said
Prof. Osborne ; "but it's overstrained and exaggerated."

"But isn't it alive.?" asked Thyrsis.

The other pondered; he always spoke deliberately,
choosing his words with precision. "Some people might
think so," he said. "For myself, I have never known
any such life."

"But what's that got to do with it.?" cried Thyrsis.

"It has much to do with it — for me. One has to

judge by what one knows "

169

170 LO^'E'S PrLGRIMAGE

"But can't one be taught?"

The professor meditated again. "I have lived forty-
five years," he said, "and you have hved less than half
that. I imagine that I have read more, studied more,
thought more than you. Yet you ask me to submit
myself to your teaching !"

"Xo, no!" cried Thyrsis, eagerly. "It is not as if
it were a matter of learning — of scholarship — of knowl-
edge of the world. There is an intensity of experience
that is not dependent upon time; in the things of the
imagination — in matters of inspiration — surely one
does not have to be old or learned."

"That might be true," admitted the other, hesitat-
ingly.

"You read the poetry of Keats or Shelley, for in-
stance. They were as young as I am when they wrote
it, and yet you do not refuse to acknowledge its worth.
Is it just because they are dead, and their poems are
classics ?"

So these two wrestled it out. Thjrrsis could bring
the other to the point of acknowledging that there
might be genius in his work, but he could not bring
him to the point of doing anything about it. The poet
went away, seeing the situation quite clearly. Prof.
Osborne was an instructor ; it was his business to know ;
and if he should abdicate before one of his pupils,
then what would become of authority? He had certain
models, which he set before his class ; these models con-
stituted literature. If anyone might disregard them
and proceed to create new models according to Ms own
lawless impulse — then what anarchy would reign in a
classroom! Under such circumstances, it was remark-
able that the professor had even been wLUing to admit
of doubts; as Thyrsis walked home he clenched his

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 171

hands and whispered to himself, "I'll get that man some
day !»

§ 2. The road now lay clear before Thyrsis, and
accordingly he set grimly to work. He had his docu-
ment printed upon a long slip of paper, and got sev-
eral packages for Corydon to address. And one evening
they took them out and dropped them into the mail-
box. "And now we'll see!" he said.

They soon saw. When he came in for lunch the next
day, Corydon came to the door, in great excitement.
"S-sh!" she whispered. "There's a reporter here!"

"A reporter!" he echoed.

"Yes — a woman."

"What does she want?"

"She wants an interview about the book."

"Where is she from.?"

"She's from the 'Morning Howl'. She's read the
circular."

"But I never sent it there !"

"I know; but she says a friend gave it to her. She
knows all about it."

So Thyrsis went In, like a lamb to the slaughter.
He was new to interviews, and he yielded to the graces
of the friendly and sympathetic lady. Yes, he would
be glad to tell about his book; and about where and
how he had written it, and all the hopes he had based
upon it.

"And your wife tells me you've just been married!"
said the lady, with a winning smile, and she proceeded
to question him about this. They had become good
friends by that time, and Thyrsis told her many things
that he would not have told save to a charming lady.
And then she asked for his picture, explaining that she

172 LOATl'S PILGRnL.\GE

could give so much more space to the "storjr" if she
had one. And then she begged for a picture of Cory-
don, and was deeply hurt that she could not have it.

She prolonged the interview for an hour or so, and
came back again and again in the effort to get this
picture of Corydon. Finally she rose to go; but out
in the haQ, as she was bidding them good-bye. she sud-
denly exclaimed that she had left her gloves, and went
back and got them, and then hurried away. And it
was not untQ an hour or two later that Thyrsis made
the horrible discovery that the photograph of Corydon
which had stood upon his bureau was standing upon
his bureau no longer I

So next morning, there were their two photographs
upon the second page of the 'iloming Howl', and a
two-column headline:

"YoTTTHFri. Gexius Offers Himsku fob. Sat.f. I"

Thyrsis rushed through this article, writhing with
horror and dismay. The woman had made him into
what they called a "human interest" feature. There
was very little about his book, but there was much about
the picturesque circumstances under which he had writ-
ten it. There was a description of their personal ap-
pearance— of Corydon's sweet face and soulful black
eyes, and of his broad forehead and sensitive hps.
There was also a complete description of their domestic
menage, including the chafing-dish and the odor of
lamb-chops. There was a highly diverting account of
how they had "doped" with only eight dollars in the
world: together with all the agonies of their parents,
as imagined by the sympathetic lady.

They had been butchered to make a holiday for the

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 173

readers of a yellow journal! "This is a wonderfully
interesting world," the paper seemed to say — "well
worth the penny it costs to read about it! Here on the
first page is Antonio Petronelli, who cut up his sweet-
heart with a butcher-knife, and packed her in a trunk.
And here are seven people burned in a tenement-house ;
and an interview with Shrike, the plunger, who made
three millions out of the wheat-corner. But most di-
verting of all are these two little cherubs who ran away
and got married, and now want the world to support
them while they write masterpieces of literature !"

And could not one see the great public devouring the
tale — the Wall Street clerks in the cars, and the shop-
girls over their sandwiches and coffee, and the loungers
in the cafes of the Tenderloin ! Could not one picture
their smiles — ^not contemptuous, but genial, as of people
who have learned that it is indeed an interesting world,
and well worth the penny it costs to read about it !

§ 3. CoRYDON shed tears of rage over this humilia-
tion, and she wrote a letter fuU of bitter scorn to the
newspaper woman. In reply to it came a friendly note
to the effect that she had done the best thing in the
world for them — that when they knew more about life
and the literary game, they would recognize this !

The tangible results of the adventure were three.
First there came a letter, written on scented note-paper,
from a lady who commended their noble ideals and
wished them success — but who did not sign her name.
Second, there came a visit from a brother poet — a
man about forty years of age, shabby and pitiful, with
watery, light blue eyes and a feeble straggly moustache,
and a manner of agonized diffidence. He stood in the
doorway and shifted from one foot to the other, and

174 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

explained that he had read the article, and had come
because he, too, was an unrecognized genius. He had
written two volumes of poetry, which were the greatest
poetry ever produced in English — Milton and Shakes-
peare would be forgotten when the world had read these
volumes. For ten years he had been trying to find some
publisher or literary man to recognize him; and per-
haps Thyrsis would be the man.

He came in and sat on the bed and unwrapped his
two volumes — several hundred typewritten pages, elab-
orately bound up in covers of faded pink silk. And
Thyrsis read one and Corydon the other, while the poet
sat by and watched them and twisted his hands nerv-
ously. His poetry was all about stars and blue-bells
and moonlight, about springtime and sighing lovers,
about cold, rain-beaten graves and faded leaves of
autumn — the subjects and the images which have been
the stock in trade of minor poets for two thousand years
and more. Thyrsis, as he read, could have marked
fifty phrases which were feeble imitations of things in
Tennyson and Longfellow and Keats ; and he read for
half an hour, in the vain hope of finding a single
vigorous line.

This interview was a very painful one. He could
not bear to hurt the poor creature's feelings, and he did
not know how to get rid of him. The matter was made
still more difllcult by the presence of Corydon, who did
not know the models, and therefore thought the poetry
was good. She let the visitor go on to pour out his
heart; until at last came a climax that Thyrsis had
been expecting all along. The man explained that he
was a bookkeeper, out of work, and with a wife and
three children on the verge of starvation; and then he
tried to borrow some money from them !

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 175

The third result was the important one. It was
a letter from a publishing-house.

"We are on the lookout for vital and worth-while
books," it read, "and we are not afraid to venture.
We have been much interested in the account of your
work, and we should be very glad if you would give
us a chance to read it immediately."

Thyrsis had never heard of this publishing-house,
but that did not chill his delight. He hurried down-
town with the manuscript, and came back to report.
The concern was lodged in two small rooms in an ob-
scure office-building. The manager, a Mr. Taylor,
was a man not particularly prepossessing in appear-
ance, but he was a person of intelligence, and was evi-
dently interested in the book. Moreover he had
promised to read it at once.

And that same week came the reply — a reply which
set the two almost beside themselves with happiness.
"I have read your manuscript," wrote Mr. Taylor.
"And I have no hesitation in pronouncing it a work of
genius. In fact, I am not sure but what it is the
greatest piece of literature it has ever been my fortune
as a publisher to come upon. It is vital, and passion-
ately sincere, and I will stake my reputation upon the
prophecy that it will be an instantaneous success. I
hope that we may become the publishers of it, and will
be glad if you will come to see me at once and talk
over terms."

Thyrsis read this aloud ; and then he caught Corydon
in his arms, and tears of joy and relief ran down her
cheeks.

He went to see the publisher, and for ten or fifteen
minutes he listened to such a panegyric upon his book
as made his cheeks burn. Visions of freedom and

176 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

triumph rose before him — ^he had come into his own at
last! And then Mr. Taylor proceeded to outline
his business proposition — and as Thjrsis realized the
nature of it, it was as if he had been suddenly plunged
into an Arctic sea. The man wanted him to pay one-
half the cost of the plates of his book, and in addition
to guarantee to take one hundred copies at the whole-
sale price of ninety cents per copy!

"Is that — is that customary in publishing?" asked
the other.

"Not always," Mr. Taylor replied; "but it is our
custom. You see, we are an unusual sort of publishing-
house. We do not run after the best-sellers and the
trash — we pubhsh real books, books with a mission and
a message for the world. And we advertise them widely
— ^we make the world heed them ; and so we feel justified
in asking the author to help us with a part of the ex-
pense. We pay ten per cent, royalty, of course, and in
addition the author has the hundred copies of his book,
which he can sell to friends and others if he wishes."

"What would it cost for my book?" Thyrsis asked.

And the man figured it up and told him it could be
done for about two hundred and fifty dollars. "I'U
make it two hundred and twenty-five to you," he said
— "just because of my interest in your future."

But Thyrsis only shook his head sadly. "I wish I
could do it," he said, "but I simply haven't the money
—that's aU."

And so he took his departure, and carried his manu-
script to another publisher, and then went home, crushed
and sick.

§ 4. But the more Thyrsis thought of this plan,
the more it came to possess him. If he could only get

THE BAIT IS SEIZED ITT

that book printed, it could not fail to make its im-
pression ! He had thought many times in his despera-
tion of trying to publish it himself ; and if he did that,
he would have to pay the cost of the plates, of the
printing and everything; whereas by this method he
could get it for much less, and would have a hundred
copies which he could send to critics and men of letters,
in order to make certain of the book's being read.

When the manuscript came back from the next pub-
lisher, with a formal note of rejection, Thyrsis made
up his mind that he would concentrate his efforts upon
this plan. So he got down to another pot-boiler.

An old sea-captain had told him a story of some
American college boys who had stolen a sacred idol
in China. Thyrsis saw a plot in that, and the editor
of the "Treasure Chest" considered it a "bully" idea.
So he toiled day and night for a couple more weeks, and
earned another hundred dollars. And then he did some-
thing he had never done in his life before — ^he went to
some relatives to beg. He pleaded how hard he had
worked, and what a chance he had; he would pay back
the money out of the first royalties from the book —
which could not possibly fail to earn the hundred dol-
lars he asked for.

Besides this, he had some money left from his first
story; and so he went to Mr. Taylor, who was affable
and enthusiastic as ever, and paid his money and signed
the contracts. He was told that his book would be ready
for the spring-trade; which meant that he would have
to possess his soul in patience for three months. Mean-
time he had forty dollars left — upon which he figured
that he could have eight weeks of uninterrupted study.

But alas, for the best-laid plans of men ! It was on
a Tuesday morning that he paid out his precious two

178 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

hundred and twenty-five dollars ; and on the next Thurs-
day morning, as he was glancing through the news-
papers, he gave a cry of dismay.

"Corydon," he called. "What's the name of that
lawyer, your trustee.'"'

"John C. Hammond," she replied.

"He shot himself in his ofiice yesterday!" exclaimed
Thyrsis ; and he read her the account, which stated that
Hammond had been speculating, and was believed to
have lost heavily in the recent 'slump in cotton.

Corydon was staring at him with terror tin her
eyes. "What does it mean?" she cried.

"I don't know," said Thyrsis. "We'll have to in-
quire !"

They went out and telephoned to Corydon's father,
and Thyrsis got hold of a college friend, a lawyer, and
the four went to the office of the dead man. It was
weeks before they became sure of the whole sickening
truth, but they learned enough on that first day to make
them fairly certain. John C. Hammond had got rid of
everything — not. only his own funds, but the funds be-
longing to the eight or ten heirs of the estate. The
house in which he lived and everything in it was held
in the name of his wife ; and so there was not a penny
to pay Corydon her four thousand dollars!

The girl was almost prostrated with misery; she
vowed that she would go back to her parents, that she
would go to work in an office. And poor Thyrsis
could only hold her in his arms and whisper, "It doesn't
matter, dear — ^it doesn't matter ! The book wiU be out
in the spring, and I can do pot-boilers for two !"

§ 5. But in the small hours of the night Thyrsis
lay awake in his Uttle room, and the soul within him was

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 179

sick with horror. He was trapped — there was no use
trying to dodge the fact, he was trapped! His powers
were waning hour by hour, his vision was dying within
him; every day he knew that he was weaker, that the
grip of circumstance was tighter upon him. Ah, the
hideous cruelty of the thing — it was like a murder in
the night-time, hke a torturing in some secret dungeon !
He was burning up with his Inward fires — there was
a new book coming to ripeness within him, a book that
would be greater even than his first one. And he could
not write it, he could not even think about it! And
there was the soul of Corydon calling to him, there
were all the heights of music and poetry — and instead
of climbing, he must torture his brain with hack-writ-
ing! He must go down to the editors, and fawn and
cringe, and try to get books to review; he must study
the imbecilities of the magazines and watch out for
topics for articles; he must rack his brains for jokes
and jingles — ^he, the master of life, the bfearer of a new
religion, the proud, high-soaring eagle, whose foot
had never known a chain !

When such thoughts came to him, he would dig his
nails into the pahns of his hands, he would grit his
teeth and curse the world. No, they should not con-
quer him! They should never bend him to their will!
They might starve him, they might kill him — ^they
might kill Corydon, also, but he would never give up !
He would fight, and fight again, he would struggle to
the last gasp — he would do his work, though all the
powers of hell rose up to stop him !

One thing became clear to him that night, they could
not afford two rooms. They must get along with one,
and with the dollar and a half one at that. The steam-
radiator had proved a farce, anyway — there was never

180 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

any steam, and they had had to use gas-heaters. And
now, what things Corydon could not get into his room,
she would have to send back to her parents. The cost
of the other room was the price of a book-review, and
that sometimes meant a whole day of his precious
time.

He talked it over with his wife, and she agreed with
him. And so they underwent the humiliation of telling
their landlady, and they obtained permission to keep
Corydon's trunk in the hall, as there was no place for
it in the tiny room. Such things as would not go upon
the little dressing-stand, or hang behind the door, they
put into boxes and shoved under the bed. And now,
when midnight came, Thyrsis would go out for a walk
while Corydon went to bed ; and then he would come in
and make his own bed upon the floor, with a quilt which
the landlady had given them, and a pair of blankets
they had borrowed from home, and his overcoat and
some of Corydon's skirts when it was cold. Sometimes
it would be very cold, and then he would have to sleep
in his clothing; for there was no room save directly
under the window, and they would not sleep with the
window down. In the morning Corydon would turn her
face to the wall while Thyrsis washed and dressed ; and
then he would go out and walk, while she took her turn.

And so he parted with the last shred of his isolation.
He had to do all his work now with his wife in the room
with him. And though she would sit as still as a mouse
for hours, still he could not think as before ; also, when
she was worn out at night, he had to stop work and
let her sleep. Under such circumstances it was small
wonder that he was sometimes nervous and irritable ;
and, of course, there could be nothing hid between

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 181

them, and when he was out of sorts, Corydon would be
plunged into a bottomless pit of melancholy.

Then the strain and worry, and the night and day
toil, began to have effects upon their health. Thyrsis
had a strong constitution, but now he began to have
headaches, and sometimes, if he worked on doggedly,
they grew severe. He blamed this upon their heater;
he knew little about hygiene, but he had studied physics,
and he knew that a gas-heater devitalized the air. They
had tried living in the room without heat, but in mid-
winter they could not stand it. So on moderate days
they would sit with the window up and their overcoats
on ; and when it was too cold for this, they would burn
the heater for an hour or so, and when they began to
feel the effects of the poisons, they would go out and
walk for a while and let the room air.

But then again, Thyrsis wondered if the headaches
might not be due to the food he was eating. They
were anxious to economize on food ; but they did not
know just how to set about it. Thyrsis had read the
world's literature in English, French and German, in
Italian, Latin and Greek; but in none of that reading
had he found anything about the care of his own
body. Such subjects had not been taught at school
or college or university, and he knew of no books
about them. Both he and Corydon had come from fami-
lies which had the traditions of luxurious living, brought
down from old days when there were plenty of negro
servants, and when the ladies had been skilled in baking
and preserving, and the men with chafing-dish and
punch-bowl. At his grandfather's table Thyrsis had
been wont to see a great platter of fried chicken at
one end, and a roast beef at the other, and a cold ham
on a side table; and he had hot bread three times a

182 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

day, and cake and jam and ice-cream — and he had been
taught to believe that such things were needed to keep
up one's working-powers.

But now he had read how Thoreau had lived upon
corn-meal mush ; and he and Corydon resolved to
patronize the less expensive foods. The price of meat
and eggs and butter in the winter-time was in truth
appalling; so they would buy potatoes and rice and
corn-meal and prunes and turnips. They paid the land-
lady for the use of her gas-range, and would cook a
sauce-pan full of some one of these things, and fill up
with it three times a day. Then, at intervals, some
one would invite them out to dinner ; and because they
were under-nourished they would gorge themselves —
which was evidently not an ideal method of procedure.
So in the end Thyrsis made up his mind to consult a
physician about it ; and this was a visit he never forgot
— for it led directly to the most momentous events of
his whole lifetime.

§ 6. The doctor announced that he had a little dys-
pepsia, and gave him a bottle full of a red liquid that
would digest his food. Also he warned him to eat slowly,
and to rest after meals. And Thyrsis, after thanking
him, had started to go ; when the doctor, who was an
old friend of both families, asked the question, "How's
Corydon.?"

"She's pretty well," said Thyrsis.

"And are you expecting any children yet ?" asked the
other, with a smile.

Thyrsis started. "Heavens, no!" he said.

"Why not.?" asked the doctor.

"We aren't going to have any."

"But why? Are you preventing it?"

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 183

Thyrsis hesitated a moment. "We're not living that
way," he said.

The doctor stared at him. "Come here, boy," he
said, "and sit down."

Thyrsis obeyed.

"Now tell me what you mean," said the other.

"I mean that we — we're just brother and sister,"
said Thyrsis.

"But — why did you get married.?"

"We got married because we wanted to study."

"To study what.?"

"Well, everything — music, principally."

"And how long do you expect to keep that up?"

"Oh, for a good many years — until we've accom-
plished something, and until we've got some money."

And the doctor sank back and drew his breath. "I
don't wonder your stomach's out of order !" he said.

"What do you mean.?" asked Thyrsis.

But the man did not answer that question. Instead
he asked, "Don't you realize what you'll do to Cory-
don?"

"What?"

"You'll wreck her whole life — her health, to begin
with."

"But how, doctor? She's perfectly happy. It's
what we both want to do."

"But doesn't she love you?"

"Why, yes — ^but not that way."

The doctor smiled. "How do you know?" he asked.

"Because — she's told me so."

"And if it was otherwise — do you think she'd tell
you that?"

"Why, of course she would."

"My boy," said the man, "she'd die first!"

184. LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Thyrsis was staring at him, amazed.

"Let me tell you a little about a good woman," said
the other. "I've been married for thirty years — really
married, I mean ; we've got five children. And in all
those thirty years my wife has never made an advance
of that sort to me!"

After which the doctor went on to expound his
philosophy of sex. "Love is just a little thing to you,"
he said ; "you've got your books and your career. And
you want it to be the same with Corydon — ^you've suc-
ceeded in persuading her that that's what she wants
also. You're going to make her a copy of yourself!
But you simply can't do it, boy — she's a woman. And
a woman's one interest in the world is love — it's every-
thing in life to her, the thing she's made for. And if
you deprive her of love, whole love, I mean, you wreck
her entirely. Just now is the time when she ought to
be having her children, if she's ever to have any^and
you're trying to satisfy her with music and philosophy !"

"But," cried Thyrsis, horrified, "I know she doesn't
feel that way at all !"

"Maybe not," said the other. "Her eyes are not
opened. It's your business to open them. What are
you a man for.?"

"But — she's all right as she is "

"Isn't she nervous .J"'

"Why, yes — perhaps "

"Isn't she sometimes melancholy.'' And doesn't she
like you to kiss her.? Doesn't she show she's happy
when you hold her in your arms."

Thyrsis sat mute.

"You see!" said the other, laughing. "The girl is
in love with you, and you haven't sense enough to know
it."

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 186

Again Thyrsis could find no words. "But if we had
a child it would ruin us!" he cried, wildly. "I've not
a cent, and my whole career's at stake!"

"Well," said the other, "if it's as bad as that, don't
have any children yet."

"But — but how can we?"

"Don't you know how to control it?"

Thyrsis was staring at him, open-eyed. "Why, no !"
he said.

"Good lord!" laughed the other. "Where have you
been keeping yourself?"

And then the doctor proceeded to explain to him
the "artificial sterilization of marriage." No whisper
of such a thing had ever come to the boy before, and
he could hardly credit his ears. But the doctor spoke
of it as a man of the world, to whom it was a matter
of course ; he went into detail as to the various methods
that people used. And when finally Thyrsis rose to
leave he patted him indulgently on the shoulder, and
laughed, "Go home to your wife, my boy!"

§ 7. The effect of this conversation upon Thyrsis
was alarming to him. At first he tried to put the thing
aside, as being something utterly inconceivable between
him and Corydon. But it would not be put aside.

The doctor had planted his seed with cunning. If
he had told Thyrsis that he was doing harm to himself,
Thyrsis would have said that it was not true, and stood
by it; for he knew about himself. But the man had
made his statements about Corydon — and how could he
be sure about Corydon?

The crucial point was that it set him to thinking
about her in this new way; a way which he had not
dreamed of previously. And when once he had begun

186 LOVE'S PILGREMAGE

to think about her so, he found he could not stop. For
hitherto in his life, whenever he had thought of passion,
it had been as a temptation ; he had known that it was
wrong, and all that was best in him had risen up to
oppose it. But now all that was changed — ^the image
of Corydon the doctor had called up was one that
broke down all resistance, and left him at the mercy
of his impulses.

These impulses awoke — and with a suddenness and
force that terrified him. He thought of her as his
wife, and this thought was like a rush of flame upon
him. His manhood leaped up, and cried aloud for its
rights. He discovered, almost instantly, that he loved
her thus, that he desired her completely. This was
true now, and it had been true from the beginning ; he
had been a fool to try to persuade himself otherwise.
What else had been the meaning of the passionate pro-
tests in his letters to her.'' Of the images he had used —
of carrying her away in his arms, of breaking her to
his will? And she loved him, too — she desired him com-
pletely! Why else had it been that those passages
were precisely the ones that satisfied her? Why was
it that she was always most filled with joy when he was
aggressive and masterful?

Ah God, what an inhuman life it was they had been
living all these months ! In that inevitable proximity —
shut up in a little room! And with the most intimate
details of her life about him — ^with her kisses always
upon his lips, her arms always about him, the subtle
perfume of her presence always in his senses ! Was
it any wonder that they were nervous and restless —
always sinking into tenderness, and exchanging endear-
ments, and then starting up to scourge themselves?

He went home, and there was Corydon preparing

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 187

supper. He went to her and caught her in his arms
and kissed her. "I love you, sweetheart!" he whis-
pered. And as she yielded to his embraces, he kissed
her again and again, upon her lips and upon her
cheeks and upon her neck. Ah, she loved him — else
how could she let him kiss her like that !

But it was not so quickly that the inhibitions of a
lifetime could be overcome. A sudden fear took hold
of Thyrsis. What was he doing .'' No, she must have
no idea of this — at least not until he had reasoned it out,
until he had made up his mind that it was right.

So he drew back — and as he did so he noticed in
her eyes a look of surprise. He did not often greet
her in that way!

"I'm hungry as a bear," he said, to change the
subject; and so they sat down to their supper.

Thyrsis had important writing to do that evening,
and he tried his best, but he could not put his mind
upon anything. He was all in a ferment. He pleaded
that he had to think about his work, and went out for
a long walk. "^

A storm was raging, and the icy gale beat upon him.
It buffeted him, it flung him here and there; and he
set himself to fight it, he drove his way through it,
lusty and exultant. And music surged within him,
lusty and exultant music. All the pent-up passion of
his lifetime awoke in him, the blood ran hot in his
veins ; from some hidden portion of his being came
wave after wave of emotion, sweeping him away — and
he spread his wings to it, he rose to the heights upon
it, he laughed and sang aloud in the glory of it. He
had known such hours in his own soul's life, but never
anything like it with Corydon. He cried out, what a
child he had been! He had taken her, he had sought

188 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

to shape her to his will ; and he had failed, she was not
jet his — and all because he had left unused the one
great power he had over her, the one great hold he
had upon her. But now it would be changed — she
should have him! And as he battled on with the ele-
ments there came to him Croethe's poem of passion :

"Dem Schnee, dem Regen,
Dem Wind entgegen!"

§ 8. So for hours he went. But when he had come
home, and stood in the vestibule, stamping the snow
from him, there came a reaction. It was Corydon he
had been thinking of — Corydon, the gentle and inno-
cent! How could he say such things to her? How could
he hint of them? Why, he would fiU her with terror!
It was not to be thought of!

He went upstairs, and found that she was asleep.
So he crept into his little bunk ; but sleep would not
come to him. The image of her haunted him. He
listened to her breathing — he was as close to her as
that, and still she was not his !

It was nearly day before he slept, and so he awoke
tired and restless. And then came rage at himself —
he went out and walked again, and stormed and scolded.
He would not permit this, he had work to do. And he
made up his mind that he would not allow himself to
think about the matter for three days. By that time
the truth would be clearer to him; and he meant to
settle this question with his reason, and not with his
blind desire.

He adhered to his resolution firmly. But when the
three days were past, and he tried to think about it,
it was only to be swept away in another storm of emo-

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 189

tion. It seemed that the more tightly he pent this
river up, the fiercer was its rush when finally it broke
loose. For always his will was paralyzed by that sug-
gestion that he might be doing harm to Corydon !

At last he made up his mind that he must speak to
her; and one afternoon he came and knelt beside her
and put his arms about her. "Sweetheart," he said,
"I've something to ask you about."

Now to Corydon the mind of Thyrsis was like an
open book. For days she had known that something
was disturbing him. But also she had known that he
was not ready to tell her. "What is it.?" she asked.

"It's something very important," he said.

"Yes, dear."

"You know, I went to see the doctor the other day."

"Yes."

"And he told me — he thinks we are doing each other
harm by the way we are living."

"What way, Thyrsis?"

"By not being really married. He says you are
suffering because of it."

"But Thyrsis!" she cried, in astonishment. "I'm
not!"

"He says you wouldn't know it, Corydon. It would
keep you nervous and upset."

"But dear," she said, "I'm perfectly happy!"

"Are you sure of it?"

"Perfectly sure."

"And — and if it was ever otherwise — ^you would tell
me?"

"Why, yes."

"And are you sure of that?"

She hesitated; and when she tried to answer, her
voice was a whisper — "I think so, dear."

190 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

There was a pause. "Thyrsis," she exclaimed, sud-
denly, "I would have a child!"

"No, you needn't," he said; and he told her what
the doctor had said.

It was quite as new to her as it had been to him, and
even more startling. "I see," she said, in a low voice.

"Listen, Corydon," he whispered, "do you think you
love me at all that way.?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I never thought of
such a thing."

*'Do you think you could learn to love me so?"
- **How can I tell, Thyrsis.? It's so strange to me. It
— it frightens me."

He looked up at her; and he saw that a flush was
mottling her throat, and spreading over her cheeks.
He saw the wild look in her eyes also; and he turned
away. , ,

"Very well, dearest," he said. "I don't want to
disturb you."

So he tried to go back to his work. But he could not
do his real work at all. He could practice the violin
or read German with Corydon, but when he tried to
plan his new book — that involved turning his thoughts
loose to graze in a certain pasture, and they would not
stay in that pasture, but jumped the fence and came
back to her. And so he found himself taking more
long journeys, in which he walked in the midst of the
storm of his desire.

So, of course, all the former naturaJness was gone
between them. No longer could they kiss and toy with
one another as children in a fairy-world. They had
suddenly become man and woman — fighting the age-
long duel of sex. They would talk about the question ;
and the more they talked about it, the more it came

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 191

to dominate the thoughts of both of them; and this
broke down the barriers between them — Thyrsis be-
came bolder, and more open in his speech. He lost his
awe of her maidenhood and her innocence — ^he wooed
her, he lured her on; he rejoiced in his power to agi-
tate her, to startle her, to speak to her about secret
things. He would clasp her in his arms and shower
his kisses upon her ; and she would yield to him, almost
fainting with bliss — and then shrink from him in sud-
den alarm.

Then he would go out into the night and battle again
with the wintry winds. That frightened shrinking of
hers puzzled him. Everything was so strange to him ;
and how could he be sure what was right? He wanted
to do what was right, with all his soul he wanted it ;
if he were to do wrong, or to make her think less of
him, he could never forgive himself all his life. But
then would come the wild surge of his longing, and his
man's power would cry out within him. It was his
business to overcome her shrinking, to compel her to
yield. The question of the doctor rang in his ears as
a taunt — "Why are you a man?" Why was he a man?

§ 9. In the end these emotions reached a point
where Thyrsis could no longer bear them. They were
a torment to him, they deprived him of all rest and
sleep. One afternoon he had held her a long time in
his arms, and it hurt him ; he turned away, and put his
hands to his forehead. "Dearest," he cried, "I can't
stand this any longer!"

"Why?" she asked. "What do you mean?"
"I mean it's just tearing me to pieces !"
She stared at him in fright. "Thyrsis!" she ex-
claimed. "You are unhappy 1"

192 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

He sunk down upon the bed and hid his face in his
arms. "Yes," he whispered, "I am unhappy !"

And so, all at once, he broke down her resistance.
What had swayed him had been the thought of her suf-
fering ; and the thought of his suffering now conquered
her.

Only she did not take days to debate it. She fled
to him instantly, and wrapped her arms about him.

"Thyrsis," she whispered, "listen to me! I had no
idea of that !"

"No, sweetheart," he said. "I'm sorry — I'm ashamed
of myself "

''No, no!" she cried, vehemently. "Don't say that!
T love you, Thyrsis ! I love you, heart and soul !"

He turned and gazed at her with his haggard eyes.

"I will do anything for you," she rushed on. "You
shall have me I I will be your wife !"

Then, however, as he clasped her to him, there came
once more the shrinking. "Only give me a little time,
dear," she whispered. "Let me get used to it. Let it
come naturally."

But the only way he could have given her time would
have been to go away. Here he was, in her room — ^with
every reminder of her about him, with every incitement
to his desire. And he had but two things to choose
between — ^to go out and walk and think about her, or to
come home and sit with her and talk about their love.

They had their supper, and then again she was in his
arms. He told her about this trouble — he showed how
the love of her was consuming him. Far into the night
they sat talking, and he poured out his heart to her,
he bore her with him to the mountain-tops of his de-
sire. He took down a book of Spenser's, and read her
the "Epithalamium" ; he read her Shelley's "Epip-

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 193

sychidlon," which they both loved. All the power of
Thyrsis' genius was turned now to passion, and the
hidden forces of him were revealed as never had they
been revealed to her before. He became eloquent; he
talked to her as he had lived with himself; he awed
her and frightened her, as he had that evening upon the
hai-top. Then at last, as the tide of his feeling swept
him away again, he clasped her to him tightly, and hid
his face in her neck. "I love you! Oh, I love you!"
he cried.

She had sunk back and closed her eyes. "My
Thyrsis !" she whispered.

"You love me?" he asked. "You are quite sure?"

"I am quite sure!" she said.

He kissed her ; again and again he kissed her, until
he had made sure of her desire. Then suddenly, he
began with trembling fingers to unfasten the neck of
her dress.

For a moment she did not comprehend what he meant.
Then she gave a start. "Thyrsis!" she cried.

And she sprang up, staring at him with fright in
her eyes.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Thyrsis !" she gasped. "What — ^what were you go-
ing to do?"

And at her question, shame swept over him. He was
horrified at himself. How could he find words to tell
her what he had been going to do?

He turned away with a moan, and put his hands over
his face. "Oh God, I can't stand this !" he exclaimed.

Suddenly he went to his hat and coat. "I must go
out !" he said.

"What do you mean?" cried Corydon.

194 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"I mean I've got to go somewhere!" he replied. "I
can't stand it — I can't stay here."

"Thyrsis !" she cried, wildly. And she sprang to him
and flung her arms about him. "No, no!" she cried.
"No!"

"But what am I to do?"

"Wait! Wait!"

And she pressed him tightly to her. "Thyrsis !" she
whispered. "Can't you understand? Don't be so
stupid, dear!"

"Stupid!"

"Yes, sweetheart — can't you see? I'm only a child!
And it's so strange! It frightens me! Try to realize
how I feel!"

"But what am I to do?"

"Do? Why you must make me, Thyrsis!" And as
she said this she hid her face upon his shoulder and
sobbed. "You are a man, Thyrsis, you are a man, and
I am only a girl ! Do what you want to ! Don't pay
any attention to me!"

And those words to Thyrsis were like the crashing
of a peal of thunder. He clutched her to him, with a
force that crushed her, that made her cry out. The
soul of the cave-man 'awoke in him — ^he lifted his mate
in his arms and bore her away to a secret place.

"Put down the light," she whispered, and he did this.
And then again he began to unfasten her dress.

She submitted at first, she let him have his way.
But later, when his hands touched the soft garment on
her bosom, he felt a sharp tremor pass through her.

"Thyrsis !" she whispered.

«What is it?" he asked.
"Wait dear, wait!"
"Why wait?" he cried.

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 195

"Just a moment — please, dear!"

But he answered her — "No ! Not a moment ! No !"

She clung to him, trembling, pleading. "Please,
dearest, please! I'm afraid, Thyrsis."

But nothing could stop him now. She was his — ^his
to do what he pleased with ! And he would bend her to
his will! The voice of his manhood shouted aloud to
him now, and it was like the clashing of wild cymbals
in his soul.

He went on with what he was doing. She shrunk
away from him, but he followed her, he held her fast.

Then she began to sob — "Oh Thyrsis, wait — spare
me! I can't bear it! No, Thyrsis — ^no!"

But he answered her, "Be still! I love you! You
are mine." And for every sob and every shudder and
every moan of fear he had but one response — "I love
you! You are mine!"

He knew that he loved her now — and he knew what
his love meant. Before this they had been strangers ;
but now he would penetrate to the secret places, to the
holy of holies of her being.

Never in all his life had Thyrsis known woman. To
him woman had been the supreme mystery of life, a
creature of awe and sacredness — not to be handled,
scarcely even to be thought about. Now the awful ban
was lifted, the barriers were down ; what had been hid-
den was revealed, what had been forbidden was per-
mitted. So all the chained desire of a lifetime drove
him on; it was almost more than he could bear. The
touch of her warm breasts, the faint perfume of her
clothing, the pressure of her soft, white limbs — these
things set every nerve of him a-tremble, they turned
a madness loose in him. A blinding whirl of emotion
seized him, he was like a leaf swept away in a gale;

196 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

his words came now in wild sobs, "I love you! I love
you!" ^

So with quivering fingers he stripped her before him ;
and she crouched there, cowering and weeping. He took
her in his arms ; and that clasp there was no misunder-
standing, for all the mastery of his will was in it. Nor
did she try to resist him — she lay still, but shaking like
a leaf, and choking with sobs. And so it was that he
wreaked his will upon her.

§ 10. And then came the reaction — the most awful
experience of his life. Thyrsis was sitting upon the
bed, and staring in front of him, dazed. He was ex-
hausted, faint, shuddering with horror. "Oh, my God,
my God !" he whispered.

What had he done? Corydon, the gentle and pure
— she had trusted herself to him, and how had he treated
her? He had tortured her, he had defiled her! Oh, it
was sickening ; brutal, like a butchery ! He sunk down
in a heap, moaning, "My God ! I can't bear it ! I can't
bear it!"

And then a strange thing happened — the strangest
of all strange things ! An unforeseeable, an unimagin-
able thing!

Corydon had started up, and was listening ; and now
suddenly he felt her arms stealing about him.
"Thyrsis !" she whispered. "Thyrsis !"

"Oh, what shall I do?" he sobbed.

"What's the matter?"

"Oh, it was so horrible ! horrible !"

"Thyrsis!" she panted, swiftly. "Don't say that!"

"How could I have done it?" he rushed on. "What
a monster I am !"

"No! no!" she cried. "You don't understand.

THE BAIT IS SEIZED 197

Thyrsis! I love you! Don't you know that I love
you?"

And she tightened her clasp about him, she stole into
his arms again. "Forgive me !" she whispered. "Please,
please — forgive me, Thyrsis !"

He stared at her, dazed. "Forgive you?"

"I had no right to behave like that!" she cried. "I
was afraid — I couldn't control myself. But oh, Thyrsis,
I love you!"

And she pressed herself upon him convulsively ; she
was troubled no longer. "Yes !" she panted. "Yes !
I don't mind it any more ! I am yours ! I am yours !
You may do whatever you please to me, Thyrsis — I
love you!"

She covered him with kisses — his face, his neck, his
body. She drew him down to her again, whispering
in ecstasy, "My husband!"

He was lost in amazement. Could this be Corydon,
the gentle and shrinking.'' No, she was gone; and in
her stead this creature of desire — tumultuous and
abandoned! She was like some passion-goddess out of
the East, shameless and terrible and destroying! She
was like a tigress of the jungle, calling in the night
for its mate. She locked him fast in her arms — she
was swept away in a whirlwind of emotion, as he had
been swept before. And all her being rose up in one
song of exultation — "Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!"

"Ah, Thyrsis!" she cried. "My Thyrsis! I belong
to you now! You can never escape me now! You can
never leave me — my love, my love !"

And as Thyrsis listened to this song, his passion
died. Reason awoke again, and a cold fear struck into
his heart! What was the meaning of this?

198 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Long hours afterward, as she lay, half-asleep, in his
arms, she felt him give a sudden start and shudder.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said — "I just happened to think of
something. Something that frightened me."

"What was it.?"

"I was thinking, dear — suppose I should become
domestic !"

Book VI
THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED

She had been reading m the little cabim, and a huih
had, faMen upon them.

"Yes, thou art gone! And rownd me too the night
In ever-nearvng circle weaves her shade."

"Gone!" she said, and smiled sadly. "Where is he
gone?"

And she turned the page and read again —

"But Thyrsis nevermore we swains shall see;
See him come back, and cut a smoother reed.
And blow a strain the world at last shaU heed —

For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer'd thee!"

Then, after a pause, she added, "How often I have
remembered those words! And how pitiful they are,
when I remember them!"

§ 1. It was a tiny cupboard of a room in a tene-
ment. They sat upon their bed to eat, and they hid
their soiled dishes beneath it. Dirty children screamed
upon the avenue in front, and frowsy-headed women
and wolfish men caroused in the saloon below. Yet here
there came to them the angel with the flame-tipped
wings, and here they dreamed their dream of wonder.

In the glory of their new-found passion all life be-
came transfigured to them; they discovered new mean-
ing in the most trivial actions. There was no corner so
obscure that they might not come upon the young god
hidden ; they might touch his warm, tender flesh, and
hear his silvery laughter, and thriU with the wonder of
his presence. They spoke a new language, full of fire
and color; they read new meanings in each other's
eyes. The slightest touch of hand upon hand, or of
lips to hps, was enough to dissolve them in tenderness
and delight.

They rejoiced in the marvel of each other's being —
in the glory of their bodies, newly revealed. To Thyrsis
especially this was life's last miracle, a discovery so
fraught with bliss as to be a continual torment. The
incitements that were hidden in the softness and the
odor of unbound and tumbled hair; the exquisiteness
of maiden breasts, moulded of marble, rosy-tipped ; the
soft contour of snowy limbs, the rhythmic play of mov-
ing muscles — to dwell amid these things, to possess
them, was suddenly to discover in reality what before
had only existed in the realm of painting and sculpture.

201

202 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Corydon also, in the glow of his delight, of his
rapture and his ravening desire, discovered anew the
wonder of herself, and came to a new consciousness of
her beauty. She would stand and gaze before her, with
her hands upon her breasts, and her head flung back,
and her eyes closed in ecstasy, so that he might come
to her and kiss her — might kiss her again and again,
might touch her with his lover's hands and clasp her
with his lover's arms.

In most of these things she was his teacher. For
Corydon was one person, in body, mind and soul; in
her there were no disharmonies, no warring elements.
His friend the doctor had set forth his idea of "a good
woman" ; but Corydon's goodness proved to be after
no such pattern. Now that she was his, she was his ;
she belonged to him, she was a part of him, and there
could be no thought of a secret shame, of any reserves
or hesitations. Her body was herself, and it was joy
to her; it was joy the more, because she could give it
for love; and she sought for new ways to utter the
completeness of her giving. ^

She was like a little child about it — so free, so spon-
taneous, so genuine; Thyrsis marvelled at her utter
naturalness. For himself, in the midst of these things,
there was always a sense of the strange and the ter-
rible, a sense of penetrating to forbidden mysteries ;
but Corydon laughed in the sunlight of utter bliss — and
she laughed most at him, when she found that her
simple language had startled him.

For the maiden out of ancient Greece was now be-
come a lover ! And so she was revealed to Thyrsis — ■
she who might have marched in the Panathenaic proces-
sions, with one of the sacred vessels in her hands, or run
in the Attic games, bare-limbed and fearless. So he

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 203

learned to think of her, singing in the myrtle groves
of Mount Hymettus, or walking naked in the moon-
light in Arcadian meadows.

So he thought of her all through her life, whenever
a moment of joy came to her — whenever, for instance,
she found her way to the water. They had dressed her
in long skirts and put her in a drawing-room — ^but
Corydon had got to the water in spite of them; and
all that any Nereid had ever known, that she had
known from the time the waves first kissed her feet.

And so it was also with love; she was born to be
a priestess of love's religion. She had waited for this
hour — that she might take his hand, and lead him into
the temple, and teach him the ritual. It was a ministry
that she entered upon with the joy of all her being.
"Ah, let me teach you how to love !" she would cry. "Ah,
let me teach you how to love!"

Love was to her an utter blending of two selves, the
losing of one's personality in another's ; it meant the
forgetting of one's self, and all the ends of self. And
Thyrsis marvelled at the glory that came upon her,
at each new rapture she discovered. All the language
of lovers was known to her, all the songs of lovers
were upon her lips :

"Du bist mir ewig,
Bist mir immer —
Erb und Eigen
Ein und All!"

Such was her woman's gift : precious beyond all treas-
ures of earth, and given without price or question.
And Thyrsis trembled as he realized it ; he lived upon his
knees before her, and floods of tenderness welled up in

204 LO\1E'S PILGRIMAGE

his heart. How utterly she trusted Mm, how com-
pletely she belonged to him ! And what could he do to
show himself worthy of it — this most wonderful dream
of his life come true

"If someone should give me a heart to keep.
With love for the golden keyP'

Yet, amid aU these raptures, Thyrsis was haunted
by ^osts of doubL Would he be able to do what his
heart yearned to do? liOve meant so much to her —
and could it mean that much to him? Why couU it
not be to him the complete thing it was to her — why
must he argue and wonder and fear?

For Thyrsis' ancestors had not dallied in Arcadian
meadows. They had come frcan the wilds of Palestine
and the deserts of Northern Africa; they had argued
and wondered and feared in Gothic cloisters, in New
England meeting-houses ; and the shadow of their souls
hung over him still. He could not Iotc lore as Corydon
loved it, he could not trust it as she trusted it. It could
never seem to him the utterly natural thing — there was
always a fear of pollution, a hint of satiety, a thrill of
shame. Directly the first fires of passion had spent
themselves, these anxieties came to him; he remembered
how in his virgin youth he had thought of passion — ^as
of something strange and uncomfortable, even gro-
tesque, suggesting too closely a kinship with the ani-
mals. So he noticed that his feelings always waned
before Corydon's. She wished him to linger — love
meant so much to her !

Then too, the code of passion was all unknown to
him. What was ri^t and what was wrong? When
should one yield to desire, and when should one re-

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 205

strain it? To Cory don such questions never came — to
her there was no such possibility as excess; she was
complete and perfect, and nature told her. If there
were temptations and restraints and regrets, they were
for Thyrsis; and he had to keep them for his own
secret, he could ask no help from her. For he discov-
ered immediately that with his proud imperiousness, he
could not endure to have Corydon refuse herself to him.
So this laid a new burden upon him, an appalling one.
For were they not always together — ^her lips always
calling him, the impulse towards her always with him?

There was another circumstance — the means they had
to take to prevent the consequences of their love. From
the very first, Thyrsis had shrunk from the thought of
this ; but it was only later that he realized how much it
repelled him. It offended all his sense of economy and
purpose ; it was something done, and at the same time
undone — and so it had in it the essence of all futility
and wrongness. It took from passion its meaning and
its excuse; and yet he could not say this to Corydon;
and he knew also that he could no longer do without
her. He was bound — bound fast! And every hour
his chains would become tighter ; what was now spon-
taneous joy would become a habit — a thing like eating
and sleeping, a new and humiliating necessity of the
flesh!

§ 2. Such were their problems. They might have
solved them all, perhaps — had they only had time. But
others came crowding upon them, others still more in-
sistent and perplexing. The world was pressing them,
jealous of their dream of delight.

Their little fund of money was gone, and so Thyrsis
went back to his hack-work. All day he sat by the

206 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

window and slaved at it, while Corydon lay upon the
bed and read, or wandered about the park by herself.
Thyrsis' burden was twice as heavy now, for he had to
earn for two; and when in the ecstasies of love she
cried out to him that she was his forever, the cruel
mockery of circumstance translated this to mean that
he would forever have to earn for two !

He wrote more book-reviews, and peddled them about ;
sometimes he was forced to exchange them for books
he reviewed, and then to sell the books for twenty or
thirty cents apiece. He wrote up some ideas for po-
litical cartoons, and got three dollars for one of them.
He wrote a parody upon a popular poem, and got six
dollars for that. He met a college friend, just re-
turned from a trip in the Andes, and he patiently col-
lected the material for a narrative, and sold it to a
minor magazine for fifteen dollars.
^ And meanwhile he toiled furiously at another pot-
boiler, a tale of Hessians and Tories and a red-cheeked
and irresistible revolutionary heroine, to fill the insa-
tiable maw of the readers of the "Treasure Chest." On
one occasion, when everything went wrong, Corydon took
the half-dozen solid silver coffee-spoons and the heavy
gold-plated berry-spoon which had constituted her out-
fit of wedding-presents, and sold them to a nearby
jeweler for two dollars and a quarter.

But through all this bitter struggle they looked for-
ward to a glorious ending. In April the book would
be out — and then they would be free! They would go
away to the country — perhaps to the little cabin of
last summer ! Ah, how they dreamed of that cabin, how
they hungered for it! They pictured it, covered in
snow, with the ice-bound brook in front of it — both

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 207

the cabin and the brook asleep, and dreaming of the
spring-time.

Thyrsis was dreaming of it also, with tears in his
eyes and a mighty passion in his heart; for his new
book was calling to him — ^he had to fight hard to keep
it from taking possession of his thoughts and driving
the pot-boilers out of the temple.

There came the joyful excitement of reading the
proofs of his book ; also of inspecting the cover-de-
sign, and the sample of the paper, and the "dummy".
And then — it was two weeks from now ! Then it was
only ten days — then only one week. And finally the
raptures of the first sample copy! •■

It was time the publishers had begun to advertise it,
and T^hyrsis went to see Mr. Taylor about the matter.
Mr. Taylor was vague in his replies. Then came publi-
cat'Vn-day, and still no advertisements ; and Thyrsis
called again, and insisted and expostulated, and learned
to h's consternation that they were not going to ad-
ve-t'=o it ; the season was a bad one, the firm had met
^jfV -noT-Tiected expenses, and so on. When Thyrsis re-
m'Tir'-r) them of their promises, and threatened and
stormed, Mr. Taylor informed him quietly that there
was Tir+hing in the contract about advertising.

S'^ Thyrsis went home, and tried to forget his rage
in t^p work of disposing of his hundred copies. He
had T-f-uared himself for the possibility of everything
else ^"'ling, but here he had a plan whereby he felt that
his d ^'verance was assured. He had made up a list
of a ' "Tidred of the best-known men of letters in the
country — college presidents and professors, editors and
clergymen, novelists and poets and critics ; and he had
done more hack-work, and earned the twenty dollars
it would take to send to each of them a copy of the

208 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

book, together with his manifesto, and a little type-
written note. This, he felt, would make certain of the
book's being read ; and once let the book be read by the
real leaders of the country's thought, and his siege
would be at an end!

So the packages went to the post-ofBce, freighted with
the burden of his hopes and longings. And two or three
times a week Thyrsis went to see his publishers, and
find out how the book was going. He was never able to
ascertain just what they were doing with it, or how
they expected to sell it; Mr. Taylor would tell him
vaguely that it was doing fairly well — the season was
"slow", and he must give the book time to "catch on".

And then came the reviews. A clipping-bureau had
written, offering to furnish them at five cents apiece;
and this was moderate, considering that there were only
a dozen altogether. Most of these were from unim-
portant out-of-town papers, whose book-reviews are
written by the high-school nieces and the elderly maiden-
aunts of the publishers. Of the metropolitan news-
papers and literary organs, only three noticed the book
at all; and two of these gave perfunctory mention,
evidently made up from the publisher's statement on
the cover.

The third writer had connected the book with the
interview in the "Morning Howl", and he wrote a bur-
lesque review of it, in which he hailed it as the "Great
American Novel". His method was to retell the story,
quoting the most highly-wrought passages, with just
enough comment to keep it in the vein of farce. To
Thyrsis this mockery came like a blast of fire in the
face? he did not know that it was the regular method
of the newspaper — a method by means of which it had

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 209

made itself known as the cleverest and most readable
paper in the country.

§ 3. All this was the harder for him, because it
came at a black and spectral hour of his life. It was
not enough that the book was falling flat, and that
all their hopes were collapsing ; a new and most terrible
calamity befell them. For three months now they had
been dissolved in the bliss of their young dream of
love; and now suddenly had come a thunderbolt, split-
ting the darkness about them, and revealing the grim
hand of Fate closing down !

For several years of her life Corydon had carried a
trying burden — once each month she would have to lie
down for three or four days and be a semi-invalid. And
last month this had not happened ; the time had come
and gone, and she was as well as ever. She had told
Thyrsis about it, and how it disturbed her; it might
mean nothing, it had happened several times before to
her ; but then again — it might mean that she had con-
ceived.

The idea had been too frightful to contemplate,
however, and they had put it aside. It was not possible
— the doctor had told them how to prevent it ; he had
told them that "everybody" did it, and that they could
feel safe.

But now came the second month ; and Corydon, filled
with a vague terror, waited for the day. And horrible
beyond all telling — the day came and went once more !
And two days came — three days ! And so finally Cory-
don went to see the doctor.

When she came home again, and entered the room,
Thyrsis saw it all in her face, without her uttering a

210 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

word. He went sick, all at once; and Corydon sank
down upon the bed.

"Well?" he asked, in a hoarse voice.

"It's true," she said.

"And what did he say?"

"He said — he said I was in splendid shape, and that
I would have a fine baby !"

And Thyrsis stared at her, and then suddenly burst
into wild laughter, and hid his head in his arms. Such
was their mood that she could not feel sure whether
he was laughing or crying.

Now, indeed, they were facing the reality of life. All
the problems with which they had ever wrestled were
as child's play to this problem; they could sit and read
the deadly terror in each other's eyes. Corydon's lip
was trembling, and her face was white and drawn and
old. So swiftly had fled her young dream of joy!

"Thyrsis," she said, in a low voice, "it means ruin !"

"Yes," he answered.

And she clenched her hands tightly. "I will kill
myself first !" she whispered. "I will not drag you
down!"

He made no reply.

"Listen, Thyrsis," she went on. "There is only one
thing to be thought of. I must get rid of it."

"Get rid of it?" he echoed. "How?"

"I don't know," she said. "But women often do it."

"I've heard of it," he replied. "But isn't it danger-
ous.?"

"I don't know," she said, "and I don't care."

There was a pause.

"Why don't you ask the doctor?" he inquired.

"The doctor? There was no use us asking him,
Thyrsis."

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 211

"Why not?"

"Because — ^he doesn't understand. He likes babies.
That's his business."

They argued this. But in the end Thyrsis resolved
that he must see the doctor himself. He must see him
if it was only to pour out his anguish. It was the
doctor's fault that this fearful accident had befallen
them!

But the boy soon saw that it was as Corydon had
said, there was nothing to be gained in that quarter.
Babies were indeed the doctor's business ; they were
the business of the whole world, from his point of view.
People got married to have babies ; they were in the
world to have babies, and anything else was just non-
sense. Nowadays babies were the only excuse that
people had for living — their morality began and ended
with them. Moreover, babies were fine in themselves ;
they were beautiful and fat and jolly. The pagan
old gentleman sang a very paean in praise of babies —
the more of them there were, the more laughter upon
earth.

Also, having them was the business of women — ^that,
and not reading German poetry and playing the piano.
They all made a little fuss at the outset, but then they
submitted, and they soon found that Nature knew more
than they. Babies completed women's lives, they settled
their nerves ; they gave them something to think about,
and saved them from hysteria and extravagance and
sentimentalism, and all the rest of the iUs of the hour.

Then the doctor fixed his keen eyes upon him. "Are
you and Corydon thinking about an abortion.'"' he de-
manded.

"I — I don't know," stammered Thyrsis. The word
sounded ugly.

212 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"I got that impression from her," said the other.'
"And now let me tell you — if you do that, it'll be some-
thing you'll never forgive yourself for as long as you
live. In the first place, you may lose your wife. It's
a very dangerous thing, and a woman is seldom the
same after it. You might make it impossible for her
ever to have a child again, and so blast her whole life.
You'll have to trust her in the hands of some vile
scoundrel — ^you understand, of course, that it's a
crime ?"

"I suppose so^" said Thyrsis.

"It's a crime not only against the law — it's a crime
against God. And it's the curse of our age!"

There was a pause.

"What's the matter with Corydon, anyway?" de-
manded the doctor.

"She's so young!" cried Thyrsis.

"Nonsense! She's nineteen now, isn't she? And she
couldn't be in better condition."

"But she's so undeveloped — mentally, I mean."

"There's nothing in the world will develop her like
maternity. And can't you see that she wants the
baby?"

"Wants it !" shouted Thyrsis.

"Why, of course! She's dead in love with you, boy.
And she wants the baby! Why shouldn't she have it?"

"If I could only make you understand — " protested
Thyrsis, feebly.

"Yes !" exclaimed the doctor. "That's what they all
say! Not a day passes that some woman doesn't sit
in this office and say it! Each case is different from
any other case that ever was or could be. They tell
me how much they suffer, and what a state their nerves
are in, and how busy they are, and how poor they are

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 213

— their social duties, and their artistic duties, and their
religious duties, and their philanthropic duties! And
they weep and wring their hands, and tell me agonizing
stories, and they offer me any sum I could ask — many
a time I might earn a thousand dollars by something
that wouldn't take me ten minutes, if only I didn't
have a conscience! — Go away, boy, and get those ideas
out of your head !"

§ 4. So Thyrsis went away, with a new realization
of the seriousness of his position, with a new sense of
the grip in which he was fast. It was a conspiracy
of Nature, a conspiracy of all the world! It was a
Snare !

All through this love-adventure, even when most un-
der the sway of his emotions, Thyrsis' busy mind had
been groping and reaching for an understanding of
it. Little by little this had come to him — and now the
picture was complete. He had beheld the last scene
of the panorama ; he had got to the moral of the tale !

He had been the sport of cosmic forces, of the blind
and irresistible reproductive impulse of Nature. Step
by step he had been driven, he had played his part ac-
cording to the plan. He had hesitated and debated and
resolved and decided — thinking that he had something
to do with it all ! But now he looked back, and saw
himself as a leaf swept along by a torrent. And all
the while the torrent had known its destination ! He had
had many plans and many purposes, but always Nature
had had but one plan and one purpose — which was the
Child!

Twelve months ago Thyrsis had been a boy, care-
free and happy, rapt in his dream of art ; and now here
he was, a married man, with the cares of parenthood

214 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

on his shoulders! If anyone had told him that such
a trick could be played upon him, he would have laughed
at them. How confident he had been — how certain of
his mastery of life ! And now he was in the Snare !

Dismayed as he was, Thyrsis could not but smile as
he realized it. The artist in him appreciated the tech-
nique of the performance. How cunningly it had all
been managed — how cleverly the device had been hidden,
how shrewdly the bait had been selected !

He went back over the adventure. What a fuss he
and Corydon had made about it ! What a vast amount
of posturing and preluding, of backing and filling!
And how solemnly they had taken it — how earnestly they
had believed in the game! What convictions had
weighed upon them, what exaltations had thrilled them
— two pitiful little puppets, set here and there by un-
seen hands! Rehearsing from prologue to curtain the
age-long drama, the drama of Sex that had been played
from the beginning of the world !

He marvelled at the prodigality that Nature had dis-
played— at the treasures she had squandered to ac-
complish her purpose ! She would create a million eggs
to make one salmon; and she had created a million
emotions to make one baby ! What poems she had writ-
ten for them — what songs she had composed for them !
She had emptied the cornucopiae of her gifts into their
lap ! She had strewn the pathway with roses before
them, she had filled their mouths with honey, and their
ears with the sound of sweet music ; she had blinded
them, she had stunned them, she had sent them drunken
and reeling to their fate !

And the elaborate set of pretenses and illusions that
she had invented for them! The devices to lull their
suspicions — the virtues and renunciations, the humili-

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 215

ties and the consecrations ! Corydon had been fright-
ened and evasive : Xatiire had made him suffer, so as
to break her down ! And he had been proud and de-
fiant; and so Corydon, the meek and gentle, had been
turned into a heroine of revolt ! Nay, worse than that;
those very powers and supremacies that he had thought
were his protection — were they not, also, a part of the
Snare? His culture and his artistry, his visions and
his exaltations — what had they been but a lure for
the female? The iris of the burnished dove, the ruff
about the grouse's neck, the gold and purple of the
butterfly's wing! Even his genius, his miraculous, in-
effable genius — that had been the plume of the par-
tridge, the crowning glory before which his mate had
capitulated !

These images came to Thyrsis, until he burst into
wild, sardonic laughter. He saw himself in new and
grotesque hghts ; he was the peacock, spreading his
gorgeousness before a dazzled and wondering world;
he was the young rooster, strutting before his mate,
and thrilling with the knowledge of his own import-
ance! He was each of the barnyard creatures by
turn, and Corydon was each of the fascinated females.
And somewhere, perhaps, stood the farmer, snuling
complacently — for should there not be somewhere a
farmer in this universal barnyard?

But then, the laughter died ; for he thought of Master-
linck's "Life of the Bee", and shuddered at the fate of
the male-creature. He was a mere accident in the
scheme of Nature — she wasted aU his splendors to ac-
complish the purpose of an hour. And now it had
been accomplished. He had had his moment of ecstasy,
his dizzy flight into the empyrean ; and now behold him
falling, disembowelled and torn, an empty shell!

216 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

But no — it was not quite that way, Thyrsis told
himself, after further reflection. In the human hive
the male creature was not only the bearer of the seed,
he was also the worker. And so there was one more
function he had to perform. All those fine frenzies
of his, his ideals and his enthusiasms — they had served
their purpose, and would fade; but before him there
was still a future — a drab and dreary future of per-
petual pot-boiling!

He recalled their bridal-night. AD that had puzzled
him in it and startled him — ^how clear it was now!
Corydon had shrunk from him, just enough to lure
him; and then, suddenly, her whole being had seemed
to change — she had caught him, and held him fast.
For he had accomplished her purpose; he had gotten
her with child ! And so he must stand by her — he must
bring her food, that she might give the child life ! And
for that purpose she would hold him; for that she
would use every art of which she was mistress — the
whole force of her being would go into it !

She would not know this, of course; she would do
it blindly and instinctively, as she had done everything
so far. She would do it by those same generous and
beautiful qualities that had made him hers ! Therein
lay the humor of his whole adventure — there lay the
deadly nature of this Snare. The cords of it were
woven out of love and tenderness, out of ecstasy and
aspiration ; and they were wound about his very heart-
strings, so that it would kill him to pull them loose.
And he would never pull them loose — he saw that in a
sudden vision of ruin ! She would be noble to the utter-
most limit of nobleness. She would threaten to destroy
herself — and so he would save her! She would bid
him cast her away — and so he would stand by her to

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 217

the^nd ! And the end would be simply the withering and
shrivelling of those radiant qualities which he called his
genius — qualities which were so precious to him, but
about which Nature knew nothing !

So grim an aspect had life come to wear to this boy
of twenty-one! He stripped all the flesh of illusion
from its fair face, and saw the grinning ^kull be-
neath. And he mocked at himself, because of all those
virtues by which he had been caught — and which yet
he knew were stronger than his will. Through faith
and love he had been made a captive ; and through faith
and love would he waste away and perish !

§ 5. Meantime., Corydon was prosecuting an in-
quiry into these matters upon her own account, and
getting at quite other points of view. There were some,
it seemed, who took this game less seriously than she
and Thyrsis ; and these managed to go free — ^they
broke the cords of the Snare, they slipped between the
fingers of the hand of Fate. Corydon had heard a
certain scientist refer to man as "Nature's insurgent
son" ; and now came the discovery that Nature had
insurgent daughters also.

Being in an "interesting condition," Corydon was en-
titled to the confidences of the married women acquaint-
ances of the family. They were eager to know all
about her, and what she was going to do ; and they told
her their own experiences. She brought these to Thyr-
sis, who was thus admitted to a view of the inner work-
ings of the "race-suicide" mill.

It was as the doctor had said; each one of these
middle-class ladies considered herself a special case, but
their stories all seemed to fit together. Nature's bound-
less and irrational fecundity was an exceedingly trying

218 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

feature of the life of middle-class ladies. In the first
place, the having of babies was a tedious and painful
matter. One became grotesquely disfigured, and had
to hide away and sever all social relationships. One
lost one's grace and attractiveness, and hence the
power to hold one's husband. And then, there were all
the cares and the inconveniences of children. What was
one to do with them, in a city where the best hotels and
apartment-houses barred them out?

Then, too, even supposing the best of intentions-^
there was the cost of living. At present prices it was
impossible for a man who had only a salary to support
more than one or two children ; and with prices in-
creasing as they were, one could not be sure of edu-
cating even these. And meanwhile, the Nature of
Things had apparently planned it that a woman should
bear a child once a year for half her life-time !

So all these middle-class ladies used devices to pre-
vent conception. But these were not always successful
— husbands were frequently inconsiderate. And so came
the abortion-business, which the doctor had described as
the curse of the age.

Now and then one could accomplish the thing by some
of the innumerable drugs that were advertised for the
purpose. But these always made one ill, and seldom did
anything else. Corydon met one young person, the
wife of a rising stockbroker, who had presented her
husband with twins in the first year of their marriage,
and who declared that she was apparently designed to
populate all the tenements in the city. This airy and
vivacious young lady lay back in her automobile and
prattled to Corydon, declaring that she was "always in
trouble." She had tried to coax her family physician
in vain, and had finally gone elsewhere. She had got

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 219

quite used to the experience. All that troubled her
nowadays was how to make excuses to her friends.
One could not have "appendicitis" forever!

But there was another side to the matter. There was
one woman who had had a hemorrhage; and another
whose sister had contracted blood-poisoning, and had
died in agony. There were even some who pleaded and
exhorted like the doctor, and talked about the thing's
being murder. All of which arguments and fears Cory-
don brought to her husband, to be pondered and dis-
cussed.

They spent whole days wandering about in the park
in agony of soul. They had one brief month in which
to decide the question — the question of life or death
to the possible child. Truly here, once more, was an
issue to which Thyrsis might apply the words of
Carlyle

"Choose well, your choice is
Brief and yet endless P'

§6. This was also the month in which the fate of
the book was decided. Each day, as he went for the
mail, Thyrsis' heart would beat high with expectation ;
and each day he would be chilled with bitter disappoint-
ment. He was still hoping for a real review, or for
some signs of the book's "catching on". Nor did he
finally give up until he chanced to have a talk about it
with his friend, Mr. Ardsley; who explained to him
that here, too, he had fallen into a trap.

His "publishers" were, not really publishers at all.
They did not make their profit by selling books — they
made it out of authors. There were many vain and
foolish people who wrote books which they were

220 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

anxious to see in print, so that they might be known as
literary lights among their friends. Many of them
had money, and would buy a number of copies ; and the
"publishers" had the expenses guaranteed in advance,
and so would make a profit upon the sale of even one
or two hundred copies. All this being well known, the
reviews never paid any attention to the announcements
of this concern, nor did "the trade" handle their books.
As for Thyrsis' volume, they had printed it very
cheaply — it was to be doubted if. it had cost them what
he had paid them. And they had even published it as
a "net price" book — thereby taking three cents more
off the royalty to which he was entitled !

Mr. Ardsley had declared that he would be lucky if
his book sold three hundred copies ; and so he felt that
it was quite a tribute to the merits of his work when,
after six months more of waiting, he received a royalty
statement from the concern showing a sale of seven
hundred and forty-three copies, and enclosing a check
for eight-nine dollars and sixteen cents. This check
Thyrsis paid over to his rich relative, and a week or
two later, when he sold a short story, he sent the balance
of the hundred dollars that he owed. And so he figured
that the privilege of writing his first book and offer-
ing it to the hundred great men of letters of the
country, had cost him the sum of one hundred and
thirty-five dollars and eighty-four cents!

Meantime, of course, Thyrsis was hearing from these
great men of letters. When he counted up at the end
he found that he had received replies from sixteen of
them; whether the other eighty-four received his book,
or what they did with it, he never knew. Of these six-
teen, six wrote formal acknowledgements, and two others
said that they found nothing to appeal to them in his

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 221

book; so there were left eight who gave him comfort.
Several of these were among the really vital men of
the time, as Thyrsis found out later, when he came to
read their books, and to know them as something other
than newspaper names. Several of them wrote him long
and really helpful criticisms of his work, recognizing
the merits he knew it had, and pointing out defects
which he was quick to acknowledge. Four of them even
told him that he had undoubted genius, and predicted
great things for him. But that was as far as any of
them went. They wrote their opinions, and there they
stopped, as if at a blank wall. No one among them
seemed to feel that he could take any action upon his
opinion, however favorable ; not one comprehended that
what the boy was groping for was neither praise nor
blame, but a chance for life. Not one had any advice
of a practical sort to offer; not one had any personal
or human thing to say ; not one even asked to see him J
And lest this should be due to oversight, or to false
delicacy, Thyrsis wrote, in his desperation, and re-
minded them that the "genius" they recognized was
being killed by starvation. To this, one did not reply,
and another advised him to take up newspaper work, as
"a means of getting in touch with the public" !

It was a ghastly thing to the boy as he came to
realize it — this utter deadness and coldness of "the
world". Thyrsis himself was all afire with love — ^with
love, not only for his vision and his art, but for all
humanity, and for humanity's noblest dreams. His
friends were poets and sages of past time, men of
generous faith and quick sympathies; and in all the
world of the living, was there not one such man to be
found? Was there nothing left upon earth but critical
discernment and epistolary politeness?

222 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

The question pursued him still more, after the one
interview which resulted from all this correspondence.
There was a distinguished Harvard professor who had
told him that he had rare powers and must go on ; and
hearing that the professor was in New York, Tljj'rsis
asked the privilege of calling.

It was in one of the city's most expensive hotels —
for the professor had married a rich wife, and was
what people called "socially prominent". The other
did not know this ; but it seemed an awful thing to him
that anyone should be sitting in a brocaded silk^covered
chair in a palace of luxury like this, while possessed
of the knowledge that his genius was starving.

"You tell me to go on, professor," he said. "But how
can I go on.'"'

The professor was fingering his gold eyeglasses and
studying his visitor.

"You must get somo kind of routine work," he de-
clared— "enough to support you» You can't expect to
live by your writing."

"But if I do that, I can't write !" cried Thyrsis.

"You'll have to do the best you can," said the other.

"But I can't do anything! The emotions of it eat
me all up. I daren't even let myself think about my
Work when I have to do other things."

"I should think," commented the professor, "that you
would find you are still more hindered by the uncertain-
ties of hack-work."

"I do find that," the boy replied. "That is just what
is the matter with me."

"I'm afraid you'll be forced to a compromise in the
end."

"But I won't! I won't!" cried Thyrsis, wildly. "I
will starve first !"

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 223

The other said nothing.

"Or I will beg!" added Thyrsis.

The other's look clouded slightly — as the boy, with
his quick sensitiveness, noted instantly. "Of course,"
said the professor, "if you are not ashamed to do
that "

"But why should I be ashamed? Greater men than
I have begged for their art."

"Yes, I know that. And naturally — I honor that
feeling in you. If you have that much fervor — why,
of course, you will do it. But I'm a,fraid you'll find it
a humiliating experience."

"I wouldn't expect to find it a picnic," answered
Thyrsis, and' took his departure — having perceived that
the professor's leading thought was a fear lest he should
begin his begging that day.

So there it was ! There was the eminent critic, the
writer of exquisite appreciations of literature ! The
darling of the salons of Boston — which called itself the
Athens of America and the hub of the universe ! A man
with a brain full of all the culture of the ages — and
with the heart of a mummy and the soul of a snob !
He had approved of Thyrsis' consecration with his lips
— because he did not dare to disapprove it, because the
ghosts of a thousand paupers of genius had stood over
him and awed him into silence. But in his secret heart
he had despised this wan and haggard boy who threat-
ened to -beg ; and the boy went out of the palace of
luxury, feeling like an outcast rat.

§ 7. From this interview Thyrsis went to meet Cory-
don in the park; and after he had told her what had
happened, they began one more discussion of their great

224 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

problem. This had to be the final one; for the month
of respite had passed, and the time for action was come !

Through their long arguments, Thyrsis had gradu-
ally come to realize that the decision rested with him.
Corydon was in his hands ; she had become a burden
upon him, and she would rather she were dead ; «,nd so
he had to take the responsibility and issue the com-
mand. So through many an hour while Corydon slept
he had marshalled the facts and tested them, hungering
with all his soul for knowledge of the right.

To bring a child into the world would shatter every
plan they had formed. And yet, again and again, he
forced himself to face the idea. They had always
meant to have children ultimately; and now the gift
was offered — and suppose they rejected it, and it should
never be offered again ! However unpropitious the hour
might be, still the hour was here' — the task was already
one-third done. And if there were cares and responsi-
bilities, expenses and pains of child-birth — at least they
would be for a child ; whereas, in the other case, there
were also cares and responsibilities, expenses and pains
— and for naught!

Throughout all this long pilgrimage of love, Thyrsis
had been struck by the part which blind chance had
played. It was blind chance that had brought Corydon
to the country where he had gone. It was blind chance
that he had read his book to her. And then — the chance
that he had gone to see a doctor about diet ! And that
dark accident in the night, that had opened the gates
of life to a new human soul! And now, strangest of
all — the chance by which this last issue was to be de-
cided! By a walk in the park, and a casual meeting
with a nurse-maid !

"God knows I want to do what is right!" Thyrsis

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 225

had said. "But I just don't know what to say!" —
And then they sat down upon a bench, and the nurse-
maid came and sat beside them.

It was five or ten minutes before Thyrsis noted what
was going on. He was lost in his sombre brood-
ing, his eyes fixed upon vacancy; when suddenly he
heard Corydon exclaim: "Isn't he a little love!" He
turned to look.

The nurse-maid was in charge of a carriage, and in
the carriage was a baby ; and the baby was smiling at
Corydon, and Corydon was smiling back. She was
poking her finger at it, and it was catching at the finger
with its chubby paws. "Isn't he a little love!" Cory-
don repeated.

Thyrsis stared at her. But then, quickly, he hid his
thought. He even pretended to be interested.

"Isn't he pretty.?" she asked him.

Now as a matter of fact he seemed to Thyrsis to be
quite conspicuously ugly. He had red hair, and a flat
nose, and was altogether lacking in aristocratic at-
tributes. But Thyrsis answered promptly, "Yes, dear,"
and continued to watch.

And Corydon continued to play. Apparently she
knew something about babies — how to amuse them and
how to handle them, and had even heard rumors about
how to feed them. She was asking questions of the
nurse-maid, and displaying interest — Thyrsis would
have been no more amazed had he found her in converse
with a Chaldean astrologer. For a full quarter of an
hour she had managed to forget her agonies of spirit,
and to play with a baby !

They got up to go. "You like babies, don't you,
dearest.!"' asked Thyrsis, as they walked.

"Why, yes," she said.

226 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

And then there was a silence, while he pondered.
Here, he perceived in a flash, was the great hand of
Nature again !

Since the first day of their marriage Thyrsis had been
haunted by the sense of a dark shadow hanging over
them, of a seed of tragedy in their love. He had his
great task to do, and Corydon could not do it with
him. The long road of his art-pilgrimage stretched
out before him; and some day he must take his staff
and go.

And now here, of a sudden, was the solution of the
problem ! The answer to the riddle of all their dis-
harmonies ! Let Corydon have her baby — and then he
might have his books ! As he pondered, there came to
him the words of the old doctor — "She wants that
baby !"

So before he reached home, his mind was made up.
Cost what it might, she should have the baby. But
he would not tell her his reason — that must be a secret
between himself and Mother Nature. And then it
seemed to him that he could hear Mother Nature laugh-
ing behind her curtain — and laughing not only at Cory-
don, but at him. He recalled with a twinge all his
earlier cynicism, his biological bitterness ; he had taken
up the burden of his virtues again !

§ 8. In many ways this decision, once arrived at,
was a relief to them. It lifted the weight of a great
fear from their lives ; it gave them six months more of
respite — and in six months, what might not Thyrsis be
able to do? He had been toiling incessantly at his
hack-work, and had saved nearly ninety dollars, which
would be enough to keep them going until his new book
was written.

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 227

This book was now fairly seething in him. A wonder-
ful thing it was to be, far beyond his first ; in the beauty
of it and the glow of it he was forgetting all his disap-
pointments, all the mockeries of fate and the hardness of
the world. If only he could get thig book done, then
surely he would be saved, then surely men would be
forced to give him a chance!

So he waited not a moment after the decision was
made; he even blamed himself for having waited so
long. From the "higher regions" there had come a
windfall in the shape of two railroad-passes ; and a
couple of days later they stepped out upon the depot-
platform of a Uttle town upon the shore of Lake
Ontario.

Oh, the joy of being in the country again ! The smell
of the newly-plowed earth, the sight of the spring-time
verdure ; and then the first glimpse of the lake, with its
marvellous clear-green water, and the fresh cold breeze
that blew from ofi' it! There was challenge and ad-
venture in that air — Thyrsis thought of argonauts
and old sea-rovers, and his sold was stirred to high re-
solves. He took deep breaths of delight, and clenched
his hands, and imagined that he was at his book
already.

They found a second-hand tent which coidd be bought
for eight dollars ; four dollars more would pay for the
lumber, and so they would live rent-free for the next
five months ! They went far down the shore of the lake,
looking for a place to camp, and picked out a rocky
headland, a mile from the nearest farmhouse, and com-
pletely out of sight of all the world. The rich woman
who owned it was in Europe, but the agent gave per-
mission ; and then Thyrsis looked at his watch and

228 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

made a wild suggestion — "Let's get settled this after-
noon !"

"Why, it's nearly three o'clock!" cried Corydon.
"It'll be dark!"

"There'll be a moon," he replied, "and we can work
all night if want to."

"But suppose it should rain !"

"I don't see any signs of it. And what's the use of
spending a night in the town, and wasting all that
money.'"'

And so it was decided. They went to the store and
purchased their housekeeping equipment. What a sense
of power and prosperity it gave them as they made their
selection — two canvas-cots and two pairs of blankets,
a lamp and an oil-can and a tiny oil-stove, two water-
buckets and an axe and a wash-basin, a camp-stool
and a hammock and a box full of groceries ! They got
a team to carry all this, in addition to their lumber
and their trunks. They stopped at a farm-house, and
arranged to get their milk and eggs and bread and
vegetables, and also to borrow a hammer and saw; and
then till after sundown Thyrsis toiled at the building
of the platform and the cutting of stakes and poles for
the tent.

Corydon fried some bacon and heated a can of corn,
and they had a marvellous and incredible supper. After-
wards they raised the tent, and she held the poles erect
while Thyrsis tied the guy-ropes. They had been ad-
vised to choose a sheltered place, back in the woods ; but
they were all for adventure and a view of the water, and
so they were out on the open point. There were pine-
trees, however, and Thyrsis had strong ropes with which
to anchor the tent fast. When he finished, about ten
o'clock at night, he stood off and admired the job by

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 229

the light of the moon, and declared that a s+orm might
tear the tent to pieces, but could never blow it over.
They hauled in their trunks and the rest of their be-
longings, and set up the cots and spread the blankets.
Then by the light of the oil-lamp they gazed about.
"Oh, Thyrsis," she cried, "isn't it glorious !"
"It's our home," he said. "A home we made all for
ourselves !"

"And a home without a landlady!" she added.
"And with no saloon underneath!" said he. "And
no street-cars and no screaming children in front of
it!"

Instead there was the night with its thousand eyes,
and the lake, with the moon-fire flung wide across it,
and the pine-trees singing in the wind.
"Brr! it's cold!" exclaimed Corydon.
"We'll have to sleep with our clothes on for a while,"
said he. And yet they laughed aloud in glee. "It's all
we want!"

"It's all we ever could want!" declared Corydon.
"Oh, let's work hard and earn money enough, so that
we can stay here beneath the open sky, and not have
to go back into slavery!"

Then, in the morning, the joy of a plunge in the icy
lake, and of a run in the woods, and of breakfast eaten
in the warm sunlight ! There was much work still to
be done ; Thyrsis had to build a stand of shelves and a
table for the tent, and a table and a bench outside ; and
then all their belongings had to be unpacked and set in
order. Such fun as they had laying out the imaginary
partitions in their house; two bedrooms and a library,
a kitchen and a pantry — and all outdoors for a living-

room

They would count this the beginning of their love;

230 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

at last they were free to love, and to be happy as they
chose. There was no longer anyone to criticize them,
scarcely anyone to know about them ; their only contact
with the world was when they went for the mail and for
provisions. They learned that the washer-woman who
came for their clothes was ashamed for the poverty in
which they lived, and that some of the neighbors
suspected them of being oil-smugglers ; on two occa-
sions came sheriffs from distant coimties to compare
Thyrsis with the photographs and descriptions of long-
sought bank-burglars and murderers. But although
Thyrsis had often declared that he would rob a bank to
secure his freedom to work, he had not yet done it, and
so these experiences only added piquancy to their ad-
venture.

It was a life such as might have been lived in the
Garden of Eden. They cooked and ate and studied out
doors, in a sunny glade when it was cool, and in the
shade of a great oak-tree when it was warm. They
wandered about in the forest, they bathed naked in the
crystal lake— diving from the rocky headland, and
afterwards standing upon it and drying themselves in
the sun. Corydon was now free to fling away the conven-
tionalities which had hampered her in the city ; by way
of signalizing her enfranchisement she cut short her
hair — that untamed, rebellious hair which had taken
so long to dry and to braid and to keep in order !

So they lived, in daily touch with the great heart
of Nature. They saw the sun rise on one side of the
rocky headland, and set upon the other ; they watched
the great storms sweep across the lake, and the light-
nings stab into the water. Sometimes, at night, the
gale would shake their tent until they could not be sure
if it was wind or thunder; but the stays held fast, and

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 231

they slept untroubled. And then the storm would pass,
and in the morning there would be the lake, sparkling
in the sunlight ; and the sky, clear as crystal, with the
white guUs wheeling about, and grey-blue herons stand-
ing near the shore.

There were bass to be caught from the rocky point.
"So we must have at least one meal of fish every day,"
declared Thyrsis.

"I'm wilhng," said Corydon — "if you'll catch them."

"And then, there are lots of squirrels about."

"Squirrels !" cried she.

"Yes. I can knock one over with a stone now and
then — you'll see."

"But, Thyrsis ! To eat them !"

"Did you ever taste onei"' he laughed.

"But it's cruel !" she exclaimed ; and he thought to
himself. How like the little Corydon of old!

"Wait till I've skinned him and fried him in bacon
grease," he answered.

And even so it proved. Corydon was troubled by
the crisp little toes turned up in the air, but when these
had been cut off, she yielded to the allurements of odor
and taste. "I'm nothing but a digesting machine now-
adays !" she lamented.

To which Thyrsis replied in the words of the village-
girl in "Faust," " 'She feeds two when she eats !' "

They had been obliged to give up their attempt to
live on prunes and turnips. For the doctor had warned
them that Corydon must have plenty of "good nourish-
ing food" ; and this warning was backed up by all her
women acquaintances — and also by Corydon's own in-
ner voices. The appetite that she developed was ap-
palling to them — not only as to quantity but as to
quality. She would find herself unable to eat anything

232 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

they had in their pantry, and with a craving for the
wildest and most impossible things ; or she would not
know what she wanted — and would travel to the store
and gaze about at the provisions, until a sudden
illumination came. Sometimes she would be so hungry
for it that she could not wait to get home, but woula
sit down by the road-side and devour the contents of
the market-basket. To these cravings she yielded re-
ligiously, because she had been told that they repre-
sented vital needs of her system. Some one had told
her an appalling tale about a pregnant woman who
had been possessed by a desire for bananas ; and be-
cause she had not gratified it, the baby when born had
cried for five weeks — ^until they had fed it a banana!

These strange experiences lent new interest to their
intimacy. They went through all the journey of ma-
ternity together. Pretty soon the changes in her body
began to be noticeable ; and day by day they would
watch these. How wonderful it all was, how incredible !
Thyrsis would sink upon his knees before her, and
clasp his arms about her and laugh "She's going to have
a little baby !" And Corydon would blush and protest ;
she did not like to be teased about it — she was still only
half reconciled to it. "I'm only a child myself!" she
would cry. "I've no education — ^nothing! And I'm
not fit for it!" Then he would have to comfort her,
telling her that life was long, and that the child would
be something to study.

They discussed the weighty question of the name
which they should give the child. In this, as in other
matters, they were without precedents and limitations,
and they found that excess of freedom is sometimes
an embarrassment. They were impelled towards lit-
erary reminiscence; and Thyrsis soon realized that this

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 233

was a matter in which the sensuous temperament would
have to have its way. "After all," argued Corydon, "to
you a name is a name. If you can call the baby and
have it answer, isn't that all you care about?"

"Yes," he assented, "I suppose so ; if the name's too
unhandy for calling, I can have a nickname."

To Corydon, on the other hand, a name was a vital
thing; a child that was lovely under one name might
be unendurable under another. She had been reading
Ossian, and the poems of the neo-Celtic enthusiasts;
so after much pondering and consultation she an-
nounced that Cedric and Eileen were the two names
from which they would choose.

§ 9. Maxy moods of tenderness came to them. He
loved to fondle her, to exchange endearments with
her. They gave each other foolish names, after the
fashion of lovers the world over ; and they would go on
to modify these names, and add prefixes and suffixes,
until the most ingenious philologist could not have fig-
ured out where the names had started. They made new
words, also ; they invented a whole language for use in
these times of illvunination, and which Thyrsis denoted
by the name of "dam-fool talk".

One was always discovering new qualities in Corydon.
She had as many moods as the lake by which they lived,
and it seemed to him that with each mood her whole
personality changed — she woidd even look like another
being. There was the every-day Corydon, demure, and
rather silent ; and then there was the Corydon who lived
in the arms of Nature — who swam in the water, a sister
of the mermaids, and made herself drunken with the
sunlight ; and then would come a mood of mischief, and
laughter would break from her, and her wit would be

234 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

such that Thyrsis would sigh for a stenographer. She
would make herself a Grecian costume out of a sheet,
and dance to music of her own making; or she would
. put trinkets upon her forehead, and be a gypsy-queen
— she could be anything that was wild and exotic and
unpremeditated. She had dances for that mood also —
she would laugh and caper as merrily as any young
witch. But then, again, there would come the Corydon
of melancholy and despair; her features would shrink
up, her face would become peaked and pitiful, she would
seem like a child of ten. Sometimes Thyrsis could
laugh her out of such a mood by telling her of her
^'beady black eyes"; and she did not like to desecrate
her eyes.

And now there was a new Corydon — the Corydon
who had been chosen of the Lord, the worker of a
miracle. This gave new awe to her presence, it set
a crown upon her forehead. One morning, in mid-
summer, they had come out from their bath, and she
stood upon the rock in the sunshine; and suddenly he
saw her give a start, and stand transfixed, staring in
front of her.

"What is it?" he asked.

Her voice thrilled as she whispered, "Thyrsis! It
moved !"

"Moved?" he echoed.

"I felt the child move !" she cried.

And so he came and put his hands upon her body,
and together they stood waiting, breathless, as if listen-
ing for a far-off sound.

"There! There!" she cried. "Did you feel it?"

Yes, he had felt it. And in all his life had he ever
felt anything stranger? The first sign of the new life
that was to be — the first hail out of the darkness of

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED

nonentity ! And truly, to hear that hail was to be rapt
into regions of wonder unspeakable !

It was to be a new human soul ; a creature like them-
selves, with a mind of its own, and a sense of responsi-
bility. It would be a man or a woman, independent,
self-creating, and knowing naught about this strange
inception. And yet, it would be their life also ; they had
caused it — but for them it would never have been !
Blindly, unwittingly, following the guidance of some
power greater than themselves, they had called it into
being. And in some mysterious and incredible way it
would share their qualities ; it would be a blending of
their natures, a symbol of their union, of the strange
fire that had blazed up in them and fused them together.
Truly, had they not come here to the essence of love,
that great blind force which had ruled and guided all
things from Time's beginning?

They had come to the very making of life, it seemed.
And yet, they wondered — were they reaiiy there.'' This
new soul that was to be — had they in truth created it?
Or had it existed before this? And whence did it come?
If it was really the dignified and divine thing that it
would someday imagine itself to be, was it not uncanny
that it should have come thus — a nameless, half-human,
half-animal thing, kicking inside the body of a woman?

It was Being, in all its ineffable mystery, its mon-
strous and unendurable strangeness. They lived face to
face with it, they saw a thousand aspects of it. Some-
times Corydon would be obsessed with the sense of the
sheer weight she carried; a burden fastened upon her
and not to be got rid of — an imposition and torment to
her. Then again, she would see herself in grotesque
and even comical lights — as akin to all the animals, a
cousin of the patient cow. And then would come a

236 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

moment of sudden wonder, when she would be trans-
figured, a being divine, conferring the boon of life upon
another.

It was in this last way that Thyrsis thought of her.
There was about her a sense of brooding mystery, as
of one who walks in the midst of supernatural presences.
She would sit for hours gazing before her, like Joan
of Arc listening to her voices ; and he would be touched
with awe, and would kiss her tenderly and with rever-
ence.

This brought new meanings into their love, new mean-
ings into his life; he would clench his hands and vow
afresh his battle with the world. How hideous a thing
it was that at this time she should be tormented by fears
of want and failure ! That she should have to go with-
out comforts, that she should even fear to ask for ne-
cessities— because she knew how fast his little store of
money was going ! Other women had children, and they
did not have to be haunted by the doubt if it was right
to have them, if there would be any place for them in
the world. And some of these were selfish and idle
women, too — and yet they had everything they needed!
And here was Corydon, beautiful and noble, the very
soul of devotion — Corydon must be harrowed and tor-
tured! He did not really mind the world's treatment
of himself, but for this treatment of her — ah, some-
day the world should pay for that ! Someday it should
do penance for its mockery and its blindness, that had
been a blasphemy against the holy spirit itself!

At such times as this he would put his arms about
her, and try to whisper something of the pity and grief
that filled his heart. He would try to tell her how much
he really loved her, how utterly he was devoted to her.
Some day she should have her rights, some day he would

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 237

repay her for all that she had dared for him. And
then the tears would come into Cory don's eyes, and she
would answer that she feared nothing and cared about
nothing, so long as she had his love.

§ 10. After these things, Thyrsis would go at his
book again. He would go at it doggedly, desperately.
He had scarcely taken time to get settled in the tent
and to get their housekeeping regime under way, before
he had heard the call of the book and wandered away
to wrestle with it. The writing of it was a matter of
life and death with him now — of life and death, not
only for himself, and for Corydon, but for the unborn
soul as well. His money would last him only six or
eight weeks, and then he would have to take to pot-boil-
ing again. So every hour was precious; this time there
could be no blundering permitted.

Thyrsis was not writing now about minstrels and
princesses ; he was not painting enraptured pictures
of joy and love. The pain of life had become too real
to him. His six months of contact with the world had
filled him with bitterness ; and he was forging a sharp
spear, that he could drive into the heart of folly and
stupidity.

It was the story of Hathawi, the dreamer, which he
had come upon in a Hindoo legend. "The Hearer of
Truth," was to be the title of the book; and for it
Thyrsis was working out a new style. In the original
it had been a fanciful tale ; but he meant to take it
over to the world of everyday reality, to give it the
atmosphere of utter verihood. He meant to use a style
of biblical simplicity, bare of all ornament, dealing with
the most elemental things. And this might seem easy,
but in reality it was the hardest thing in the world —

238 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

it was like blank verse. One might toil all day for a
single phrase into which to pack one's meaning.

He wished to show Hathawi from the beginning ; the
solitary child, the seer of life's mystery, who went away
into a lonely place to brood. He dwelt in the high
mountains, where the lightning played and the storm-
winds shook him ; he disciplined his will by fasting and
prayer, so that the self in him died, and he could per-
ceive eternal things, and aspects of being that are
hidden. He went into the forests and dwelt with the
wild things, and learned to understand their language —
not only their beauty and their power, which are plain ;
not only their fears and their hatreds, which are pain-
ful to discover ; but also their love, which is deepest of
aU. He learned to know the Hfe which is in lifeless
things — in water and air and fire ; the joys and sorrows
of the flowers, and the venerable wisdom of great trees,
and the worship which is in the floods of sunlight. And
having learned these things, Hathawi came back into
the world.

He found that he was able to read the souls of men 5
but at first he could not believe what he read — it was
so terrible, and so far from nature. He preferred to
stay among the poor, because they were closer to the
heart of things, and their falsehoods were simple. But
he discovered that the evil and misery of men's life
came from above, and so he went into the "great
world" to dwell.

And everywhere he went, men's innermost thoughts
were revealed to him, and to themselves through him.
He acted upon men and women like wine — an impulse
seized them to speak the truth, the truth that they had
hidden even from their own hearts. Afterwards, when
they realized what they had done, they hated Hathawi

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 239

and feared him; but they said nothing, because each
thought that the secret was his own.

But then, as his power grew, Hathawi began to reveal
men in more pubhc ways, and a scandal arose. There
was whispered a story of a great statesman who had
declared at a banquet what was his real work in the
world; and one day a bishop arose in his cathedral and
said that he taught the dogmas of his church, because
they were necessary to keep the people in subjection.
Then came the famous episode of a pohceman who bade
the prisoner go free and arrested the judge instead.
Other policemen were called upon to hinder their com-
rade,but they declared that he was right ; and then news-
paper reporters, when ordered to write about it, avowed
that they would write only what they believed. After
which came a convention of one of the great political
parties ; and the presidential candidate made a speech,
outlining his actual beliefs, and so destroyed his party.
This, of course, was a national calamity, for all states-
men declared that the people could not be deceived by
one party ; and then, too, it was reported that Hathawi
meant to attend the convention of the other party !

Because of this they shut him up in jail, charging
him with being a vagrant, which he undoubtedly was.
But he won over all the jailers and the prisoners to his
doctrine, and so the jail was emptied. Moreover, it
was found that some of those who loved him most truly
had come to share his power of hearing truth. The
madness was spreading everywhere ; agitators were busy
among the people, and public safety was threatened.
So a certain very rich man, who in Hathawi's presence
had vowed himself a wolf, engaged an assassin to strike
him down in broad daylight upon the street.

Then in order to suppress the disturbance, they

240 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

spirited the body away and burned it, and scattered the
ashes. But this was a bad thing for them to do, for
the ashes became seeds of the new contaf^ion, and all
through the great city, in the strangest and most un-
accountable way, men would suddenly begin to speak
the truth. And, of course this made business impossible
— the merchants and traders had to move away ; and
how was it possible to preserve authority, when sooner
or later all the lawyers and the judges and the poli-
ticians would speak truth? So the people arose and
declared that they were weary of lies, and they erected
a statue of Hathawi at one of the places where his ashes
had fallen, and declared that every candidate for office
must make his speeches there. After that it was a long
time before there were any officials elected — because no
man could be found to whom prominence and power were
not more precious than public welfare. But meanwhile
the people thrived exceedingly.

Finally, however — the climax of the story — the news
of all this had spread to other nations, and the rulers
of these nations perceived that it was anarchy, and
could by no means be permitted — their own people were
threatening to rise. It must be clearly shown that a
state without a government would be plundered by
enemies ; and so they prepared to plunder it. And so
arose a great agitation in Hathawi's home-state, and
men called for a dictator, and for preparations of de-
fence. But the followers of Hathawi cried out, saying,
*'Let us submit ! Let us open our city to these men, and
let them do their will — for the power of the truth is
greater than even they." And so it was decided.

When the hostile rulers heard of this a great fear
took possession of them. They remembered the fate of
certain famous diplomatists they had already sent over ;

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 241

and they dared not trust themselves near the statue of
the Hearer of Truth. So their plans of invasion came
to naught ; and among their own people there was
laughter and bitter mockery ; and behold, one morning,
a statue of Hathawi which some one had set up in a
pubhc-square ! Here the lovers of truth gathered by
thousands, and the soldiers who were sent to shoot them
laid down their arms and joined them; and so, all over
the world, was the end of the dominion of the lie.

§ 11. Such was the outline of Thyrsis' story. He
judged that it might be a very great story, or a com-
paratively commonplace one — it all depended upon the
power with which it was visioned. He must get into
himself and wrestle the thing out. This was to be his
act of creation — his baby!

It was the first time since his marriage that Thyrsis
had tried really to do what he called work. All things
else had been mere echoes of the work he had done the
previous summer ; but now he had to do something new,
something that was an echo of nothing else. Every day
that he faced the task, his agony and despair of soul
grew greater; for he found that he could not do the
work. He could not even begin to do it — ^he could not
even try to do it! He was helpless, bound hand and
foot!

It was not his fault, it was not Corydon's fault; it
was a tragedy inherent in the very nature of things —
in the two natures that were in himself. There was
the man, who loved a woman, and hungered to see her
happy ; and there was the artist, to whom solitude was
the very breath of life. To write this book — to write
it really — ^he would have to spend weeks of brooding
over it, thinking about nothing else day and night;

242 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

he would have to shape his whole existence to that end,
to be free from every distracting circumstance, from
everything that called him out of himself. And how
could he hope for such a thing, while he was living in
a tent with another person?

Thyrsis had his artist's standard of perfection. Of
course, he could never actually be satisfied with what
he did; but at least he could feel that it was the best
he was equal to — ^he could get a real and honest sense
of exhaustion for himself. But now, the moment that
he faced the problem fairly, he sgw he could never get
that real and honest sense of exhaustion again. He
was dragged up to the issue and forced to face it in-
stantly. The pressure of circumstances upon him was
overwhelming; and he had to make up his mind to do
something he had never done before — instead of really
writing his books, to do the best he could with them !

Yet, inevitable as this was, and clearly as he saw
it, he could not make up his mind to it. In reality, he
never did make up his mind to it. He did it, and in
his inmost heart he knew that he was doing it ; but all
the time he was trying to deny it, was wrestling -with
agony and despair in his soul in the effort to do some-
thing else.

He would go away in the morning and try to think
about the book; and just when he would get stai'ted,
it would be time for dinner, and there would be the
image of Corydon waiting for him. And so he would
go home, and go back in the afternoon — and when he
had got started again, it would be dark. The next
day, having explained his trouble, he would take his
lunch away with him; but in the forenoon there would
come a drenching thunder-storm, and he would have to
go back again. Or he would try to work in the tent

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 243

at night ; and the wind would howl and blow the lamp
so that he could not put his mind on anything. Nor
did it avail him to rail at himself, to tell himself that
he was a fool for being at the mercy of such mishaps.
It was none the less a fact that he was at the mercy
of them, and that he could no longer give himself up
to the sway of his imagination.

And always there was Corydon, yearning fol- his com-
panionship. It had always been their idea that they
should do the work together ; so completely would they
be fused in the fire of love, that she would share his
soul states and write parts of his books. But now that
idea had to be abandoned ; and this was her tragedy.

"I have to sit and think of my health !" she would
exclaim.

"It isn't your health, dear," he would plead; "it's
the health of the child !"

"I know that. But then, am I always to sit at home
and be placid, while you go away to wrestle with the
angels .'"'

"Not always, Corydon," he said. "This will
pass "

"If I do," she cried, "I only stay to wrestle with the
demons. And is that so very good for a pregnant
woman ?"

"My dear !" he protested.

"It's just as I said!" she went on. "I ought not to
have had the child! I'm only a school-girl, with a
school-girl's tasks. And I try and try, but I can't help
it — everything within me rebels at the cares of mother-
hood."

"That's one mood, dear," he said. "But you know
that's not true always."

"It's all the clearer to me," she insisted, "since we've

244 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

had to give up our music. I can't work at the piano
any more — I may never be able to."

"But even if you could, Corydon, I couldn't afford
to get you one now."

"No, of course not. And you have to give up your
violin !"

"Much time I have to practice it in our present
plight !"

"I know — I know! But don't you see, we lose our
last hope of growing together.? I've a vision that
haunts me all the time — you going away to do your
work, and staying for longer and longer periods — and
I sitting at home to mind the baby !"

Day after day he would come back, and she would
ask him how the book was going; and he would have
to answer that it was not going at all. Then, in his
desperation, he would make up his mind to write what he
could — to be content with this glimpse of one scene,
and with that feeble echo of what he knew the next
scene ought to be ; and he would bring the result to
Corydon, and would discover with a secret pang that
she did not know the difference. But then he would ask
himself — ^how could she know the difference? The dif-
ference did not exist ! His vision of the thing had
existed in himself, and in himself alone; if he never
uttered it, the world would never know what it might
have been — and would never care. Ah, what a future
was that to look forward to — to filling the ears of the
world with lamentations concerning the books that he
might have written ! And all the time knowing that the
ears of the world were deaf to ever3' sound he made !

§ 12. He thought that he realized the bitterness
of this tragedy all at once; but the real bitterness was

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 245

that he had to realize more and more of it every day.
It was a tragedy he had to live in the house with. He
had to watch it working itself out in all the little af-
fairs of life ; he had to see it manifesting itself in his
own soul, and in the soul of Corydon, and even in the
soul of the child. Worst of all to him, the artist, he
had to see it working itself out in what he wrote — in
book after book that went out to represent him to the
world, and that did not represent him at all, but only
represented the Snare in which he had been caught!
It was one of the facts about this Snare, that there was
no merciful Keeper to come and put the victim out of
his misery with a blow upon the head; that he was left
alone, to writhe and twist and tear himself to pieces,
and to perish of slow exhaustion. It was not a murder
— it was a crucifixion !

He could not have told for whom his heart bled most,
for himself, or for Corydon. Here she was, with her
grim problems and her bitter necessities ; needing ad-
vice and comfort, needing companionship — needing a
husband! And she had married an artist — a reed that
would grow "nevermore again as a reed with the reeds
by the river!" That could not grow, even if it had
wanted to ! For it was quite in vain that the world cried
out to him to settle down and become as other men;
he could not. The thing that was tearing at his vitals
would continue to tear ; the only choice he had was be-
tween self-expression and madness.

So, wrung as his heart was, he had to go away and
work as he could. If he yielded to his desire and stayed
by her, then the book would not be written in time ; and
so all their hopes would be gone — they would never
win their freedom then ! And he would explain this to
her; with their relentless devotion to the truth, they

246 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

would talk it all out between them. They would trace
every cord and knot of the Snare. And Corydon would
grant that he was right, and that she must submit.
He must stay away all day — and all night, if need be
— till the book was done.

Not that they were always able to settle their prob-
lems in the cold light of reason. Sometimes Thyrsis,
with his artist's ups and downs, would be nervous and
irritable ; he would manifest impatience over trifles, and
this would give rise to tragedies. There was a vast
amount of fetching and emptying of water to be done
for their little establishment ; and sometimes a man who
was carrying the destinies of the human race in his
consciousness was not as prompt as he might have been
in attending to these humble tasks. And moreover, the
water all had to be dipped up from the lake ; and some-
times, when it was stormy, it was a difficult matter to
get it as free from specks as was needed for the ablu-
tions of a fastidious young lady like Corydon.

"If you'd only take a little trouble !" she would say.
"Trouble!" he would exclaim. "Do you think I en-
joy hearing you complain about it.?"

"But Thyrsis, this is dirtier than ever !"
"I know it. The wind is blowing harder."

"But if you'd only reach out a little ways "

"I reached out till I nearly fell into the water !"
"But Thyrsis, how can I ever wash my face.'"
And so it would go. Thyrsis would be absorbed in
some especially important mental operation, and it
would be a torment to him to have such things forced
upon his attention. Corydon, it seemed to him, was al-
ways at the mercy of externals; and she was forever
dragging him out of himself, and making him aware
of them. The frying-pan was not clean enough, or

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 247

his hair was vuikempt; his trousers were ragged or his
coat was too small for him. Was life always to con-
sist of such impertinences as this?

And so Thyrsis, in a sudden burst of rage, gave the
water-bucket a kick which sent it rolling down the bank,
and then strode away to his work. But unfortunately
his work was not of a sort which he could do with angry
emotions in his soul. And so very soon remorse over-
came him. He returned, to find that Corydon had
rushed out to the end of the point, and flung herself
down upon the rocks in hysterics. And this, of course,
was not a good thing for a pregnant woman, and so he
had to set to work to soothe her.

But alas, to soothe her was never an easy task, be-
cause of her sensitiveness, and her exalted ideals of
him. However humbly he might apologize and beg
forgiveness, there would remain her grief that it had
been possible for a quarrel to occur between them. She
would drive him nearly wild by debating the event, and
rehearsing it again and again, trying to justify her-
self to him, and him to himself. Thyrsis was robust,
he wanted to let the past take care of itself; he would
tell her of all the worries that were harassing him, and
would plead with her to grant him the privilege of any
ordinary human creature, to manifest annoyance now
and then. And Corydon would promise it — she would
promise him anything he asked for ; but this was a boon
it did not lie within the possibility of her temperament
to grant. He could be angry at fate and at the world,
and could rage and storm at them all he pleased ; but he
could never be harsh with Corydon without inflicting
upon her pain that wrecked her, and wrecked him into
the bargain.

Perhaps, he thought, it was her condition that ac-

24« LOA-E'S PILGREVIAGE

counted for this morbidness. She was liable to fits
of depression, and to mysterious illness — nausea and
faintness and what not. Also, she had been told weird
tales about prenatal influences ; and he, not having been
educated in such matters, could not be sure what were
the facts. So, whenever she had been unhappy, there
was the possibility that she had done some irreparable
harm to the child ! And that made more problems for
an over-worked and sensitive artist.

He soon saw that he had to suppress forever the side
of him that was stem and exacting. Such things had
a place in his own life, but no longer in Corydon's.
Instead, he would see how she suffered, and his heart
would be wrung, and he would come back again and
again to comfort her, and to tell her how he loved her,
how he longed to do what was right. He would set be-
fore her the logic of the situation, so that if things
went wrong she might realize that it was neither his
fault nor hers — that it was the world, which kept them
in this misery, and shut them up to suffer together.
So it was, aU through their lives, that their remorseless
reason saved them ; they would find in the analysis and
exposition of the causes of their own unhappiness the
one conmion satisfaction they had in hfe.

§ IS. These were the circumstances of the writing
of "The Hearer of Truth". It was completed in six
weeks, and it did not satisfy its author, the finishing
of it brought him no joy. But that, though he did
not realize it, was the one circumstance in its favor —
the less it satisfied him, the more chance there was that
the world would know what it was about.

He had the manuscript copied, and then he sent it
off to a magazine in Boston, whose editor had been one

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 249

of his hundred great men, and had promised to read
the new manuscript at once. Meantime Thyrsis sent
for some books to review, and got to work at another
plot to be submitted to the editor of the "Treasure
Chest". For their own treasure-chest was now all but
empty, and one could not live forever upon blueberries
and fish.

Day by day they waited; and at last, one fateful
afternoon, the farmer came with some provisions and
their mail. There was a letter from Boston, and
Thyrsis opened it and read as follows:

"I have read your manuscript, 'The Hearer of
Truth', and I wish to tell you of the very great pleasure
it has given me. It is noble and fine, and amazingly
clever as well. I must say frankly that I was astonished
at the qualities of maturity and restraint it shows. I
think it quite certain that we shall wish to use it as a
serial ; but before I can say anything definite, the manu-
script will have to be read by my associates. In the
meantime I wished to tell you personally how highly
I think of your work."

Thyrsis read this, and then, without a word, he
passed it on to Corydon. As soon as the farmer's back
was turned, the two fell into each other's arms, and
all but wept. It was victory, beyond all question. The
magazine might pay as much as five hundred dollars
for the serial rights — and with that start, they would
surely be safe. Besides that, it would mean recognition
for Thyrsis — the world would have to discuss his work!

Doing pot-boilers was easy after such a triumph
as that. They even treated themselves to holidays —
they purchased a quart of ice-cream on one day, and

250 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

hired a boat and went picnicking on another. Thyrsis
got out his fiddle once again, and even became so reck-
less as to inquire about the price of a "practice-clavier"
for Corydon. Also he began inquiring as to the cost
of houses ; when they got the money they would build
themselves a little cabin here — a cabin just the size of
the tent, but with a room upstairs where Thyrsis could
do his work. After that they would be free from all the
world — they would never go back to be haunted by the
sight of

"Sorrow barricadoed evermore
Within the walls of cities."

§ 14. So a month passed by ; and Thyrsis wrote
again to the editor, and was told that they were still
discussing the story. And then, after two more weeks,
there came another letter ; and this was the way it read :

"I am sorry to have to tell you that the decision has
been adverse to using your story. My own opinion of
it has not changed in the least ; but I have been imable
to induce my associates to view it in the same light.
They seem to be imanimous in the opinion that your
work is too radical for us to put to the front. We have
a very conservative, fastidious, and sophisticated con-
stituency ; and this is one of the hmitations by which
we are bound. I am more than sorry that things have
turned out so, and I trust I need hardly say that I shall
be glad to read anything else that you may have to
submit to us."

And there it was ! "A conservative, fastidious, and
sophisticated constituency!" Thyrsis believed that he

THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED 251

would never forget that phrase while he lived. Could
one get up a thing like that anywhere in the world save
in Boston?

It was a bitter and cruel disappointment — the more
so because it had taken six weeks of his precious time.
But there was nothing to be done about it save to send
off the manuscript to another magazine. And when it
had come back from there he sent it to another, and to
yet another — paying each time a total of eighty cents
to the express-company, a sum which was very hard for
him to spare. To make an ending at once to the pain-
ful episode, he continued to send it from one place to
another, until "The Hearer of Truth" had had the
honor of being declined by a total of fifteen magazines
and twenty-two publishing-houses. The pilgrimage oc-
cupied a period of nineteen months- — after which, to
Thyrsis' great surprise, the thirty-eighth concern of-
fered to publish it. And so the book was brought out,
with something of a flourish, and met with its thirty-
eighth rejection — at the hands of the public !

Book VII
THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED

The shadow of a dark cloud had fallen upon the
woods, and the voices of the birds were strangely hushed.

"There is a spell about this place for me," she said,
and quoted —

"Here came I often, often in old days —
Thyrsis and I, we still had Thyrsis then!"

"Where is Thyrsis now?" she asked; amd he smiled
sadly, and responded:

"Ah me! this many a year
My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday!
Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart
Into the world and wave of men depart!"

§ 1. They returned to the city early in October —
not so much because they minded the cold in the tent,
as because their money was gone, and it was not easy to
do hack-work at a distance. One had to be on the spot,
to interview the editors, to study their whims and keep
one's self in their minds ; otherwise some one else got the
work.

So Thyrsis came back to his "world" ; and he found
this world up in arms against him. All the opposition
that he had ever had to face was nothing to what he
faced now. Society seemed to have made up its col-
lective mind that he should give in; and every force it
could use was brought to bear upon him — every person
he knew joined in the assault upon him.

He was bound to admit that they had all the argu-
ments on their side. He had gone his own obstinate
way, in defiance of all advice and of all precedent ; and
now he saw what had come of it — exactly what every
common-sense person had foreseen. He and Corydon had
tried their "living as brother and sister" — and here she
was with child ! And that was all right, no one proposed
to blame him for it; it was what people had predicted,
and they were rather pleased to have their predictions
come true — to see the bubble of his pretenses burst,
and to be able to point out to him that he was like all
other men. What they wanted now was simply that
he should recognize his responsibility, and look out for
Corydon's welfare. Living in tenement-rooms and in
tents, like gypsies and savages, was all right by way
of a lark ; it was all very picturesque and romantic in

255

256 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

a novel; but it would not do for a woman who was
about to become a mother. Corydon had been delicately
reared. She was used to the comforts and decencies
of life; and to get her in her present plight and then
not provide these things for her would be the act of a
scoundrel.

All through his life the world had had but one mes-
sage for Thyrsis: "Go to work!" From the world's
point of view his languages and literatures, his music
and writing were all play ; to "work" was to get a "posi-
tion". And now this word was dinned into his ears day
and night, the very stones in the street seemed to cry
it at him — ^"Get a position! Get a position!"

As chance would have it, the position was aU ready.
In the higher regions they were preparing to open a
branch of a great family establishment abroad, and
Thyrsis was invited to take charge of it. He would be
paid three thousand dollars a year at the start, and two
or three times as much ultimately ; and what more could
he want? He knew nothing about the work, but they
knew his abiUties — that if he would undertake it, and
give his attention to it, he would succeed. He would
meet people of culture, they argued, and be broadened
by contact with men ; as for Corydon, it would make her
whole life over. Surely, for her sake, he could not re-
fuse!

Thyrsis had foreseen just such things. He had
braced himself to meet the shock, and the world found
him with his hands clenched and his jaws set. There
was no use in arguing with him, he had but one answer —
*'No ! No ! No !" He would not take that position, and
he would not take any other position — neither now, nor
at any future time. He was not a business-man, he was
an artist; and an artist he would remain to the end.
It might as well be understood at the outset ; there was

THE CAPTURE IS COIVIPLETED 257

nothing that the world could do or say to him that
would move him one inch. They might starve him, they
might Idll him, they might do what they could or would
— ^but never would he give in.

"But — what are you going to do.'"' they cried.

He answered, "I am going to write my books."

"But you have already written two books, and noth-
ing has come of them !"

"Something may come of them yet," he said. "And
if it doesn't, I shall simply go on and write another,
and another, and another. I shall continue to write so
long as I have the strength left in me ; I shall be trying
to write when I die."

And so, while they argued and pleaded and scolded
and wept, he stood in silence. They could not under-
stand him — ^he smiled bitteriy as he reahzed how im-
possible it was for them to understand even the simplest
thing about him. There was the dapper corporation
lawyer and his exquisite young wife, who came to argue
about it; and Thyrsis asked them not to teU Corydon
why they had come. He saw them look at each other
significantly, and he could read their thought — that he
was afraid of his wife's importunities. And how could
he explain to them what he had really meant — ^that if
they had told Corydon they had come to persuade him
to give up his art, Corydon would probably have found
it impossible to be even decently poHte to them !

§ 2. So Thyrsis went away, carrying the burden of
the scorn and contempt of every human soul he knew.
It was in truth a dark hour in his life. He was at his
wit's end for the bare necessities. He had reached the
city with less money in his pocket than he had had the
year before; and all the ways by which he had got

258 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

money seemed to have failed him at once. All the editors
who published book-reviews seemed to have a stock on
hand; or else to know of people whose style of writing
pleased their readers better. And none of them seemed
to fancy any ideas for articles that Thyrsis had to
suggest.

Worst of all, the editor of the "'Treasure Chest"
turned down the pot-boiler which he had been writing
up in the country. He would not say anything very
definite about it — he just didn't like the story — it had
not come up to the promise of the scenario. He hinted
that perhaps Thyrsis was not as much interested in
his work as he had been before. It seemed to be lack-
ing in vitality, and the style was not so good. Thyrsis
offered to rewrite parts of the story ; but no, said the
editor, he did not care for the story at all. He would
be willing to have Thyrsis try another, but he was pretty
well supplied with serials just then, and could not give
much encouragement. '

Corydon had yielded to her parents and gone to stay
with them for a while; and Thyrsis had got his own
expenses down to less than five dollars a week — includ-
ing such items as stationery and postage on his manu-
scripts. And still, he could not get this five dollars.
In his desperation he followed the cheap food idea to
extremes, and there were times when an invitation to
an honest meal was something he looked forward to for
a week. And day after day he wandered about the
streets, racking his brains for new ideas, for new plans
to try, for new hopes of deliverance.

In later years he looked back upon it all — knowing
then the depth of the pit into which he had fallen,
knowing the full power of the forces that were ranged
against him — and he marvelled that he had ever had the

THE CAPTURE IS C0:MPLETED 259

courage to hold out. But in truth the idea of sur-
render did not occur to him; the possibility of it did
not lie in his character. He had his message to de-
liver. That was what he was in the world for, and for
nothing else; and he must deliver what he could of it.
He would go alone, and his vision would come to him.
It would come to him, radiant, marvellous, overwhelm-
ing ; there had never been anything like it in the world,
there might never be anything like it in the world
again. And if only he could get the world to realize
it — if only he could force some hint of it into the mind
of one living person ! It was impossible not to think
that some day that person would be discovered — to
believe otherwise would be to give the whole world up
for damned. He would imagine that chance person
reading his first book ; he would imagine the publishers
and their advisers reading "The Hearer of Truth" —
might it not be that at this very hour some living soul
was in the act of finding him out.'' At any rate, all
that he could do was to try, and to keep on trying;
to embody his vision in just as many forms as possible,
and to scatter them just as widely as possible. It was
like shooting arrows into the air; but he would go on
to shoot while there was one arrow left in his quiver.

§ 3. Thyesis reasoned the problem out for himself ;
he saw what he wanted, and that it was a rational and
honest thing for him to want. He was a creative artist,
engaged in learning his trade. When he had completed
his training, he would hot work for himself, he would
work to bring joy and faith to millions of human beings,
perhaps for ages after. And meantime, while he was
in the practice-stage, he asked for the bare necessities
of existence.

260 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Nor was it as if he were an utter tyro ; he had given
proof of his power. He had written two books, which
some of the best critics in the country had praised.
To this people made answer that it was no one's busi-
ness to look out for genius and give it a chance to
live. But with Thyrsis it was never any argument to
show that a thing did not exist, if it was a thing
which he knew ought to exist. He looked back over
the history of art, and saw the old hideous state of
affairs — -saw genius perishing of starvation and misery,
and men erecting monuments to it when it was dead.
He saw empty-headed rich people paying fortunes for
the manuscripts of poems which all the world had once
rejected; he saw the seven towns contending for Homer
dead, through which the living Homer begged his bread.
And Thyrsis could not bring himself to believe that a
thing so monstrous could continue to exist forever.

There was no other department of human activity
of which it was true. If a man wanted to be a preacher,
he would find that people had set up divinity-schools
and established scholarships for which he could contend-
And the same was true if he wished to be an engineer,
or an architect, or a historian, or a biologist; it was
only the creative artist of whom no one had a thought
^the creative artist, who needed it most of all! For
his was the most exacting work, his was the longest
and severest apprenticeship.

Brooding over this, Thyrsis hit upon another plan.
He drew up a letter, in which he set forth what he
wanted, and stated what he had so far done; he quoted
the opinions of his work that had been written by men-
of-letters, and offered to submit the books and manu-
scripts about which these opinions had been written.
He sent a copy of this letter to the president of each

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 261

of the leading universities in the country, to find out if
there was in a single one of them any fellowship or
scholarship or prize of any sort, which could be won
by such creative literary work. Of those who replied
to him, many admitted that his point was weU taken,
that there should have been such provision ; but one and
aU they agreed that none existed. There were re-
wards for studying the work of the past, but never for
producing new work, no matter how good it might be.

Then another plan occurred to him. He wrote an
anonymous article, setting forth some of his amusing
experiences, and contrasting the credit side of the "pot-
boiling" ledger with the debit side of the "real art"
ledger. This article was picturesque, and a magazine
pubhshed it, paying twenty-five dollars for it, and so
giving him another month's lease of life. But that was
all that came of it — there was no rich man who wrote
to the magazine to ask who this tormented genius might
be.

Then Thyrsis, in his desperation, joined the ranks
of the begging letter-writers. He would send long ac-
counts of his plight to eminent philanthropists — ^having
no idea that the secretaries of eminent philanthropists
throw out basketsful of such letters every day. He
would read in the papers of some public-spirited enter-
prise— he would hear of this man or that woman who
was famous for his or her interest in helpful things —
and he would sit down and write these people^ that he
was starving, and implore them to read his book. In
later years, when he came to know of some of these
newspaper idols, it was a* comfort to him to feel certain
that his letters had been thrown away unread.

Also he begged from everybody he met, under what-
ever circumstances he met them. If bjr any chance the

262 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

person might be imagined to possess money, sooner or
later would come some hour of distress, when Thyrsis
would be driven to try to borrow. On one occasion he
counted it up, and there were forty-three individuals
to whom he had made himself a nuisance. With half
a dozen of them he had actually succeeded ; but always
promising to return the money when his next check
came in — and always scrupulously doing this. There
was never anyone who rose to the understanding of what
he really wanted — a free gift, for the sake of his art.
There was never anyone who could understand his utter
shamelessness about it ; that fervor of consecration
which made it impossible for a man to humiliate him, or
to insult him — to do anything save to write himself down
a dead soul.

People were quite clear in their views upon this ques-
tion ; a man must earn his own way in the world. And
that was all right, if a man were in the world for him-
self. But what if he were working for humanity, and
had no time to think about himself.'' Was that truly
a disgraceful thing? Take Jesus, for instance; ought
he to have kept at his carpenter's trade, instead of
preaching the Sermon on the Moimt.? Or was it that
his right to preach the Sermon was determined by
the size of the collection he could take among the
audience.''

And then, while he pondered this problem of "earning
one's own way," Thyrsis was noting the lives of the
people who were preaching it. What were they doing
to earn the luxuries they enjoyed.'' Even granting that
one recognized their futile benevolence as justifying
them personally — what about the tens of thousands of
others who lived in utter idleness, squandering in self-
indulgence and ostentation huge fortunes of which they

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 263

had never earned a penny ? The boy could not go upon
the streets of the city without having this monstrous
fact flaunted in his face in a thousand forms. So many
millions for folly and vice, and not one cent for his
art ! This was the thing upon which he was brooding
day and night — and filling his soul with an awful bit-
terness which was to horrify the world in later years.

§ 4. He might not come to see Corydon in her
home ; but she would meet him in the street, and they
would walk in the park, a pitiful and mournful pair.
They had to walk slowly, and often he would have to
help her, for her burden had now become great. She
had altered all her dresses, and she wore a long cape,
and even then was not able to hide the disfigurement of
her person. They would sit upon a bench in the cold,
and talk about the latest aspects of his struggle, what
he was doing and what he hoped to do. Corydon would
bring him the opinions of a few more members of the
bourgeois world, and they would curse this world and
these people together. For there was no more thought
of giving up on Corydon's side than there was on his ;
it was not for nothing that he had talked to her upon
the hill-top in the moonlight.

Meanwhile, however, time was passing, and the pros-
pect of her approaching confinement hung over them
like a black thunder-cloud. It came on remorselessly,
menacingly. The event was due about Christmas time,
and there must be some money then — there must be some
money then ! But where was it to be found.''

Thyrsis had tried another story for the "Treasure
Chest," but the editor had not hked his plot. Also he
was taking "The Hearer of Truth" from one place to
another ; but with less and less hope, as he learned from

264 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

various editors and publishers how radical and subver-
sive they considered it. He took it now mechanically,
as a matter of form — making it his rule always to
coimt upon rejection, so that he might never be disap-
pointed.

One of Corydon's rich friends had told her of a
certain famous surgeon, and Corydon had gone to see
him. He had a beautiful private hospital, and his prices
were unthinkable; but he had seemed to be interested
in her, and when she told him her circumstances, he had
said that he would try to "meet her halfway." But
even with the reductions he quoted, it would cost them
nearly a himdred and fifty dollars; and how could
Thyrsis get such a sum? Even if the surgeon were
willing to wait — ^what prospect was there that he could
ever get it.""

This again was the curse of their leisure-class up-
bringing. They did not know how poor women had their
babies, and they shrunk from the thought of finding
it out. Corydon had met this man, and had been im-
pressed by him; and Thyrsis realized, even if she did
not, that she had got her heart set upon the plan. And
if he did not make it possible, and then anything were
to go wrong with her, how would he ever be able to for-
give himself? This event would come but once, and
might mean so much to them.

So he said to himself that he would "raise the
money". But the days passed €ind became weeks, and
the weeks became months, and there was no sign of the
raising. And then suddenly came one of those shafts
of sunlight through the clouds — one of those will-o'-
the-wisps that were forever luring Thyrsis into the
swamps. Another editor liked "The Hearer of Truth" ;
another editor said that it was a great piece of litera-

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 265

ture, and that he would surely use it! So Thyrsis
went to the great surgeon and told him that he would
be able to pay him in a little while; and the arrange-
ment was made for Corydon to come. And then the
editor put the "great piece of literature" away in his
desk, and forgot all about it for a month — while Thyrsis
waited, day by day, in an agony of suspense.

The appointed time had come — the day when Cory-
don must go to the hospital ; and still the editor had not
reported, and there was only fifteen or twenty dollars^
earned by weeks of verse-writing and reviewing. So
in desperation Thyrsis made up his mind to give up his
violin. He had paid ninety dollars for it three years
before; and now, after taking it round among the
dealers, he sold it for thirty-five dollars.

So, to the very gateway of life itself, Thyrsis was
hounded by these spectres of want; even to the hospi-
tal they came, and followed him inside. Here was a
beautiful place, a revelation to him of the possibilities
of civilization and science. But it was all for the rich
and prosperous, it was not for him ; he felt that he had
no business to be there.

What a contrast it all made with the tenement-room
in which he had to house ! Here were glimpses to be
had of rich women, soft-skinned and fair, clad in
morning-gowns of gorgeous hue ; here were baskets of
expensive fruits and armfuls of sweet-scented flowers ;
and here was he with his worn clothing and his hag-
gard face, his hungry stomach and still hungrier heart !
Must not all these people know that he had had to
ask for special rates, and then for credit on top of that ?
Must they not all know that he was a failure — that
most worthless of all worthless creatures, the man who
cannot support his family.'' What did it mean to them

266 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

if he had written masterpieces of literature — what
would it avail with them that he was the bearer of a
new religion ! Thyrsis had heard too much of the
world's opinion of him ; he shrunk from contact with
his fellow-creatures, reading an insult into every glance.
He was like a dog that has been too much beaten, and
cringes even before it is struck.

§ 5. But these thoughts were for himself ; he did
not whisper them to Corydon. However people might
despise him, they did not blame her, and there was no
need of this bitterness in her cup. Corydon was beauti-
ful— ah God, how beautiful she looked, lying there in
the snowy bed, with the snowy lace about her neck and
arms ! How like the very goddess of motherhood she
looked, a halo of light about her forehead. She, too,
must have flowers, to whisper to her of hope and joy;
and so he had brought her three pitiful little pinks,
which he had purchased from a lame girl upon the cor-
ner. The tears started into Corydon's eyes as she saw
these — for she knew that he had gone without a part
of his dinner in order to bring them to her.

Everybody had come to love her already, he could
see. How gentle and kind they were to her; ahd'
how skillfully they did everything for her! His heart
was full of thankfulness that he had been able to bring
her to this haven of refuge. And resolutely he put
aside all thoughts of his own humiliation- — he swept
his mind clear of everything else, and went with her to
face this new and supreme experience of her life.

"You will stay with me?" she had pleaded; and he
had promised that he would stay. She could not bear to
have him out of her sight at all, and so they made him
a bed upon the couch, and he spent the night there ; and

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 267

through the next day he sat with her and read to her.
But now and then he would know that her thoughts had
wandered, and he would look at her and see her eyes wide
with fear. "Oh, Thyrsis," she would whisper, "I'm
only a child ; and I'm not fit to be a mother !"

He would try to comfort her and soothe her. -But
in truth, he too was full of fears and anxieties. He
had felt the dome-like shape within her abdomen, which
they said was the head of the child; and he could
not conceive how it was ever to be got out. But they
told him that the thing had happened before. There
was nothing for either of them to do but to wait.

They were in the hands of Nature, who had brought
them thus far, who had had her will with them so
utterly. And now her purpose was to be revealed to
them — now they were to know the wherefore of all that
they had done. They were like two children, travelling
through a dark valley ; they walked hand in hand, lift-
ing their eyes to the mountain-tops, and seeking the
first signs of the coming light.

§ 6. OtTTSiDE, whenever they opened the window,
they could hear the noise of the busy city ; and it seemed
so strange that street-cars should jangle on, and news-
boys shout, and tired men hurry home to their dinners
— while such a thing as this was preparing. Thyrsis
gave utterance to the thought; and the doctor, who
was in the room, smiled and responded, "It happens
twice every second in the world ?'

This was the house-physician, who was to take charge
of the case ; a young man, handsome and rather dapper.
He went about his work with an air of its being an old
story to him — an air which was at once reassuring and

268 I/)VE'S PILGRIMAGE

disturbing. The two sat and watched him, while he
made his preparations.

He had two white-gowned nurses with himj and he
spoke to them for the most part in nods. One of them
was elderly and grey-haired, and apparently his main
reliance ; the other was young and pretty, and her heart
went out to Corydon. She sat by the bedside and con-
fided to her that she was a pupil, and that this was
only her third "case".

"Will it hurt me much.""' the girl asked, weakly.

And then suddenly, before there was time for an an-
swer, she turned white, and clutched Thyrsis' hand with
a low cry.

"What's the matter.?" he whispered.

Her fingers closed upon his convulsively, and she
started up, crying aloud.

The doctor was standing by the window, opening a
case of instruments. He did not even turn.

"Doctor!" Thyrsis cried, in alarm.

He put the case down and came toward the bed. "I
guess there is nothing wrong," he said, with a slight
smile. He laid his hand upon the shuddering girl.

"It is all right," he said, "I shall examine her in a
few moments."

He turned away, while Thyrsis and the young nurse
held Corydon's hand and whispered to her soothingly.

She sank back and lay tossing from side to side,
moaning ; and meantime the doctor went quietly on, ar-
ranging his basins and bottles, and giving his orders.
Then finally he came and made his examination.

"She is doing very well," he said, "and now, Miss
Mary, I have an engagement for the theatre for this
evening, I think there will be no need of me for some
hours."

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 269

Thyrsis started, aghast. "Doctor!" he cried.

"What is it.?" asked the other.

"Something might happen!" he exclaimed.

"I shall be only two or three blocks away," was the
reply. "They will send for me if there is need."

"But this pain!" cried Thyrsis, excitedly. "What
is she to do.?"

The man stood by the bedside, washing his hands.
"You cannot have a child-birth without pain," he said.
"These are merely false pains, as we call them ; the real
birth-pains may not come for hours — perhaps not until
morning. There are membranes which have to be
broken, and muscles which have to be stretched — and
there is no way of doing it but this way."

He stood with his hand on the doorknob. "Do not
be worried," he said. "Whatever happens, the attend-
ant will know what to do."

"The theatre !" It seemed so strange ! To be sure,
it was unreasonable — if a man had several cases each
week to attend to, he could not be expected to suffer
with each one. But at least he need not have men-
tioned the theatre! It gave one such a strange feeling
of isolation!

§ 7. However, he was gone, and Thyrsis turned
to Corydon, who lay moaning feebly. It was like a
knife cutting her, she said ; she could not bear to lie
down, and when she tried to sit up she could not en-
dure the weight of her own body. She found it helped
her for Thyrsis to support her, and so he sat beside her,
holding her tightly, while she wrestled with her task.
The nurse fanned her brow, on which the sweat stood
in drops.

Thyrsis' position strained every muscle in his body;

270 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

it made each minute seem an hour. But he clung there,
till his head reeled. Anything to help her — anything,
if only he could have helped her !

But there was no help ; she was gone alone into the
silent chamber of pain, where there comes no company,
no friend, no love. His spirit cried out to her, but she
heard him not — she was alone, alone! Is there any
solitude that the desert or the ocean knows, that is like
the solitude of suffering?

It would come over her in spasms, and Thyrsis could
feel her body quiver ; it would be all he could do to hold
her. And minute after minute, hour after hour, it was
the same, without a moment's respite — until she broke
into sobbing, crying that she could not bear it, that
she could not bear it! She clutched wildly at Thyrsis'
hand, and her arms shook like a leaf.

He ran in fright for the elder nurse, who had left
the room. She came and questioned Corydon, and
shook her head. "There is nothing to be done," she
said.

"But something is wrong !" Thyrsis cried. He had
been reading a book, and his mind was full of images
of all sorts of accidents and horrors, of monstrosities
and "false presentations." "You must send for the
doctor," he repeated, "I know there must be something
wrong !"

"I will send for the doctor if you wish," was the
reply. "But you must order it. The birth has not
yet begun, you know — when it does the character of
the pains will change altogether, and she will know.
Meantime there is nothing whatever for the doctor to
do."

"He might give her an opiate!" Thyrsis exclaimed.

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 271

"If he did," said the woman, "that would stop the
birth. And it must come."

So they turned once more to the task. Thyrsis bore
it until it seemed to him that his body was on fire ; then
he asked the nurse to take his place. He reeled as he
tried to walk to the sofa ; he flung himself down and
lay panting. Outside he could still hear the busy
sounds of the street — the world was going on its way,
unknowing, unheeding. There came a chorus of merry
laughter to him — his soul was black with revolt.

He went back to his post, biting his lips together.

She was only a child — she was too tender ; it was
monstrous, he cried. Why, she was being torn to pieces !
She writhed and quivered, until he thought she was in
convulsions. And then, little by little, all this faded
from his thoughts ; he had his own pain to bear. He
must hold her just so, with the grip of a wrestler; his
arms ached, and his temples throbbed, and he fought
with himself and whispered to himself — he would stay
there until he dropped.

Would the doctor never come.'' It was preposterous
for him to leave her like this. The time passed on ; he
was wild with impatience, and suddenly Corydon sank
back and burst into tears. He could stand it no more,
and sent for the nurse again.

''l"ou must send for the doctor!" he cried.

"He has just come in," the woman answered; "I
heard nim close the door."

The doctor entered the room, softly. He was per-
fectly groomed, clad in evening-dress, and with his
gloves and his silk hat in his hand. Thyrsis hated him
at that moment — hated him with the fury of some
tortured beast. He was only an assistant ; and were

272 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

not assistants notoriously careless ? Why had the great
surgeon himself not come to see to it?

"How does she bear it?" he said, to the nurse; and
he took off, his overcoat and coat, and rolled up his
sleeves, while she reported progress. Then he felt
Corydon's pulse, and after washing his hands, mq,de
another examination. Thyrsis watched him with his
heart in his mouth.

He rose without saying anything.

"Has it presented?" the nurse asked.

"Not yet," he said, and turned to look at the temper-
ature of the room.

It was so, then — there was nothing to be done!
Thyrsis was dazed — he could hardly believe it. He had
never dreamed it could be anything like this.

"How long is this to last, doctor?" he cried. "She
is suiFering so horribly!"

"I fear it wiU be until morning," he said — "it is a
question of the rigidity of certain muscles. But you
need not be alarmed, she is doing very well."

He spoke a few words to the patient, and then
turned towards the door. "I shall sleep in the next
room," he said to his assistant; "you may call me at
any time."

§ 8. So the two went apart again ; and the leaden-
footed hours crept by, and the girl still wrestled with
the fiend. The young nurse was asleep on the couch,
and the elder sat dozing in her chair; the two were
alone — all alone ! One of the window-shades was raised,
and Thyrsis could see far over the tops of the build-
ings. Somewhere out there was another single light,
where perhaps some other soul counted the fier.y pulses

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 273

of torture. A death — or another birth, -perhaps ! The
doctor had said it happened twice every second!

Thyrsis was unskilled in pain, and perhaps he bore
it ill; he feared that the nurses thought so too — that
Corydon called too often for something, or cried out
too much in mere aimless misery.

But the time sped on, and at last a faint streak of
day appeared in the sky, and the shadows began to
pale in the room. Thyrsis started, realizing that it
was morning. He had given up the morning, as a
thing that would never come again. He insisted upon
sending for the doctor, who came, striving not to
yawn, but to look pleased. Once more he shook his
head; there was nothing to do.

The street began to waken. The milkman came, his
cans rattling; now and then he shouted to his horse,
or whistled, or banged upon a gate. Then the sun
came streaming into the room. The newsboys began
to call — the young nurse woke up and began to
straighten her hair. The elder nurse also opened her
eyes, but did not stir; she seemed to challenge anyone
to assert that she had ever been asleep.

"Perhaps, Miss Mary," ventured the young nurse,
timidly, "we had best prepare the patient."

Corydon seemed to rest a little' easier now, and they
carried her and laid her on the couch. They made the
bed, with many sheets and with elaborate care ; and then
they brought her back and dressed her, putting a short
gown upon her, and drawing long white bags over her
limbs. Ah, how white she was, and what fearful lines
of suffering had been graven into her forehead !

She lay in a kind of stupor, and Thyrsis, exhausted,
began to doze. He knew not how long a time had
passed — it had been an hour, perhaps two, when sud-

274 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

denly he opened his eyes and sat up with a bound,
galvanized into life by a cry from Corydon. She had
started forward, grasping around her wildly, uttering
a series of rising screams. He clutched her hand, and
stared around the room in fright.

They were alone. He leaped up; but the nurse ran
into the room at the same instant. She gazed at the
girl, whose face had flushed suddenly purple ; she came
to her, and took her hand.

"You feel some pain?" she asked.

Corydon could not speak, but she nodded ; a moment
later she sunk back with a gasp.

"A kind of bearing-down pain.?" said the nurse.
"Different from the other.?"

Corydon gasped her assent again.

"That is the birth," the nurse said. "The doctor
will be here in a moment."

Again the horrible spasm seized the girl, and brought
her to a sitting posture ; again her hand clutched Thyr-
sis' with a grip like death, and again the veins on her
forehead leaped out. Like the surging of an ocean
billow, it seemed to sweep over her; and then suddenly
she screamed, and sank back upon the piUow.

Thyrsis was wild with alarm ; but the doctor entered,
placid as ever. "So they've come?" he said.

Nothing seemed to disturb him. He was like a being
out of another region. He took off his coat and bared
his arms ; he put on a long white apron, and washed
his hands elaborately again, and then once more ex-
amined his patient. His face was opposite to Thyrsis',
and the latter watched his expression, breathless with
dread. But the doctor only said, "Ah, yes."

He turned to Corydon. "These pains that you feel,"
he said, "are from the compressing of the womb. Don't

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 276

let them frighten you — everything is just as it should
be. You will find that you can help at each pang by
holding your breath; just as soon as you cry out,
it releases the diaphragm, and the pressure stops, and
the pain passes. You must bear each one just as long
as you can. I don't want you to faint, of course — ^but
the longer the pressure lasts, the sooner it will all be
over."

The girl was staring at him with her wild eyes — she
looked like a hunted creature in a trap. It sounded all
so very simple — ^but the horror of it drove Thyrsis
mad. Ah, God, it was monstrous — it was superhuman
— it was a thing beyond all thinking ! It wrung all his
soul, it shook him as the tempest shakes a leaf — the
sight of this awful agony.

It was like the sudden closing of a battle ; the shock
of squadrons, the locking of warriors in a grip of
death. There was no longer time for words now, no
longer time for a glance about him; the spasms came,
one after another, relentless, unceasing, inevitable —
each trooping upon the heels of the last ; they were
uncounted — uncountable — piling upon one another like
waves upon the sea, like the gusts of a raging storm.
And this girl, this child, that he had watched over so
hungrily, that was so tender and so sensitive — it was
like wild horses tearing her apart! The agony would
flame up in her, he would see her body turn rigid, her
face flush scarlet, her teeth become set and her gums
fleshed. The muscles would stand out in her cheeks,
the perspiration start upon her forehead. She would
grip Thyrsis' hand until all the might of both his
arms was not enough to match her.

On the other side of the bed knelt the young nurse,
wrestling with the other hand; and Thyrsis could see

276 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

her face flush too, each time — until at last a cry would
seem to tear its way from the girl's throat, and she
would sink back, faint and white.

It was a new aspect of life to Thyrsis, a new revela-
tion of being ; it was pain such as he had never dreamed,
it was horror the like of which was unknown in his
philosophy. All the suffering of the night was nothing
to a minute of this ; it came upon her with the rush of
a flood of waters — it seized her — instant, insistent, re-
lentless as the sweep of the planets. Thyrsis had been
all unprepared for it ; he cried out for time to think —
to realize it. But there was no time to think or to
realize it. The thing was here — now! It glared into
his eyes like a fiend of hell ; it was fiery, sharp as steel
— and it had to be seized with the naked hands !

The pangs came, each one worse than the last. They
built themselves up in his soul in a symphony of terror ;
they lifted him out of himself, they swept him away be-
yond all control, like a 4eaf in the autumn wind. He
had never known such a sensation before — his soul
seemed whirled into pieces. His feeling was apart from
his action ; he could not control his thoughts ; he was
going mad! He loved her so — she was so beautiful;
and to see her thus, in the grip of horror!

He tried to get hold of himself again — he talked to
himself, pinning his attention on the task of his hands.
Perhaps maybe it was his fancy — it did not really hurt
her so ! Maybe

He spoke to her, calling to her, in between the
crises. She turned her eyes upon him, looking unutter-
able agony ; she could not speak. And then again came
the spasm, and she reared herself to meet it. She
seemed to loom before his eyes ; she was no longer human,
but in her agony transfigured. She was the suffering

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 277

of being, made flesh; a figure epic, colossal, worthy
of an Angelo; the mighty mother herself, the earth-
mother, from whose womb have come the races!

And then — "Perhaps she would be more comfortable
with another pillow," said the doctor, and the spell was
broken.

Corydon shook her head with swift impatience. This
was her conflict, the gesture seemed to say. They had
only to let her alone — she had no words to spare for
them.

"How long does this last.'" Thyrsis asked, his voice
trembling. The doctor made- a motion to him to be
silent — evidently he did not wish Corydon to hear the
answer to that question.

§ 9. For the girl's soul was rising within her ; per-
haps from the -deeps of things there came comfort to
her, from the everlasting, universal motherhood of life.
Nature must have told her that this at least was pain
to some purpose; something was being accomplished.
And she shut her jaws together again, and closed with
it — driving, driving, with all the power of her being.
A feeling of awe stole over Thyrsis as he watched her
— a feeling the like of which he had never known in
his life before. She was a creature consecrated, made
holy by suff'ering; she was the sacredness of life in-
carnate, a thing godlike, beyond earth. It came as a
revelation, changing the whole aspect of life to him.
It was hard to realize — that woman, woman who en-
dured this, was the same being that he had met in the
world all his life — ^laughing and talking, careless and
commonplace. This — this was woman's fate! It was
the thing for which woman was made, and the lowest,
meanest of them might have to bear it ! He swore vows

2T8 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

of reverence and knighthood; he fell upon his knees
before her, weeping, his soul white-hot with awe. Ah,
what should he do that he might be worthy to live upon
the earth with a woman ?

And this was no mere fine emotion ; there was no
room for imagination in it — the reality exceeded all
imagination. Overwhelming it was, furious, relentless ;
his thoughts strove to roam, but it seized him by the
hair and dragged him back. Here — here!

She was wrung and shaken with her agony, her eyes
shut, her face uplifted, her muscles turned to stone.
And the minutes dragged out into hours — there was no
end to it — there was no end to it ! There was no mean-
ing— it was only naked, staring terror. It beat him
up again and again ; he would sink back exhausted,
thinking that he could feel no more ; but it dragged
him up once more — to agony without' respite! The
caverns of horror were rent open ; they split before
his eyes — deeper, deeper— in vistas and abysses from
which he shrunk appalled. Here dwelt the furies,
despair and madness— here dwelt the demon-forces of
being, grisly phantoms which come not into the light
of day. Their hands were upon him, their claws were
in his flesh ; and over their chasms he shuddered — he
scented the smoke of that seething pit of life, whose
top the centuries have sealed, and into which no mortal
thing may gaze and live.

Life — life — here was life, he felt. What had he
known of it before this? — the rest was pageantry
and sham. Beauty, pleasure, love — here they were in
the making of them — here they were in the real truth
of them! Raw, naked, hideous it was; and it was the
source of all things else! His being rose. in one titan
throb of rebellion. It was monstrous — it was unthink-

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 279

able! He wanted no such life — he had no right to it!
Let there be an end of it ! No life that ever was could
be worth such a price as this ! It was a cheat, a horror
— there could be no justice in such a thing! There
could be no God in it- — it was oppression, it was wrong !
He thought of the millions that swarmed on the earth
— they had all come from this! And it was happening
every hour — every second! He saw it, the whole of it
— the age-long agony, the universal birth-pang of be-
ing. And he hated it, hated it with a wild, raging
hatred — ^he would have annihilated it with one sweep
of his arm.

And yet- — there was no way to annihilate it ! It was
here — it was inevitable. And it was everlasting — it
was an everlasting delusion, an everlasting madness.
It was a Snare!

Yes, he came back to the thought — that was the
image for it! It mattered not how much you might
cry out, you were in it, and it held you! It held you
as it held Corydon, in throb after throb of torment.
She moaned, she choked, she tossed from side to side;
but it held her. It seemed to him that the storm of
her agony beat upon her like the tempest upon a moun-
tain pine-tree.

§ 10. The doctor's hands were red with blood now,
like a butcher's. He bent over his work, his lips set.
Now and then he would speak to the young nurse, whom
he was teaching; and his words would break the spell
of Thyrsis' nightmare.

"You can see the head now," he said once, turning to
the boy.

And Thyrsis looked; through the horrible gaping
wound showed a little patch, the size of a dollar —

280 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

purplish black, palpitating, starting forward when the
crises shook the mother. "And that is a head!" he
whispered, half aloud.

"But how can it ever get out?" he cried suddenly,
with wildness.

"It will get out," the doctor answered, smiling.
"Wait — you will see."

"But the baby will be dead!" he panted.

"It is very much alive," replied the other. "I can
hear its heart beating plainly."

All the while Thyrsis had never really believed in
the child — it was too strange an idea. He could think
only of the woman, and of her endless agony. Every
minute seemed a life-time to him — the long morning
had come and gone, and still she lay in her torment.
He was sick in body, and sick in soul; she had exerted
the strength of a dozen men, it seemed to him.

But now her strength was failing her, he was cer-
tain ; her moans were becoming more frequent, her pro-
tests more vehement. The veins stood out on the doc-
tor's forehead as he worked with her — muscular, like
a pugilist. Gigantic, he seemed to Thyrsis — terrible
as fate. Time and again the girl screamed, in sudden
agony; he would toil on, his lips set. Once it was too
much even for him — her cries had become incessant, and
he nodded to the nurse, who took a bottle from the
table, and wetting a cloth with it, held it to Corydon's
face. Then she shouted aloud, again and again —
wildly, and more wildly, laughing hysterically; she be-
gan flinging her arms about — and then calling to
Thyrsis, as her eyes closed, murmuring broken sentences
of love, "babbling o' green fields." It was too much
for the boy — there was a choking in his throat, and he

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 281

rushed from the room and sank down upon a chair in
the hall, crying like a child.

After a while he rose up. He paced the hall, talk-
ing to himself. He could not go on acting in this way
— he must be a man. Others had borne this — ^he would
bear it too; he would get himself together. It would
all be over before long, and then how he would be
ashamed of himself!

He went back. "It is the chloroform that makes her
do that," said the young nurse, soothingly. "She is
out of pain when she cries out so."

Corydon was coming back from her stupor ; the strife
began again. She cried out for its end, she could bear
no more. "Help me ! Help me !" she moaned.

The head was the size of a saucer now — ^but each
time that she scrieamed it would go back. Thyrsis
stood up to get the strength to grip her hand; her
face stared up into the air, looking like the face of a
wolf. And still there was no end — no end !

There was an hour more of that — the room seemed
to Thyrsis to reel. Corydon was crying, moaning that
she wished to die. There was now in sight a huge,
bulging object — ^black, monstrous — rimmed with a band
of bleeding, straining flesh, tight like the top of a
drum. The doctor was bent over, toiling, breathless.

"No more ! No more !" screamed the girl. "Oh, my
God! my God!"

And the doctor answered her, panting: "Once more!
once more ! Now ! now !" And so on, for minute after
minute; luring her on, pleading with her, promising
her, lying to her — "Once more ! Once more ! This
will be the last!" He called to her, he rallied her; he
signalled to Thyrsis to help him — to inspire her, to
goad her to new endurance.

282 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

And then another titan effort, and suddenly — in-
credibly— there burst upon Thyrsis' sight an appari-
tion. Sick at heart, numb with horror, dazed — he
scarcely knew what it was. It happened so swiftly that
he had hardly time to see ; but something leaped forth,
something enormous, supernatural! It came — it came
— there seemed never to be an end to it ! He started to
his feet, staring, crying out ; and at the same moment
the doctor lifted the thing aloft, with a cry of exulta-
tion. He held it dangling by one leg. Great God!
It was a man !

A man ! A thing with the head of a man, the body
of a man, the legs and arms, the face of a man ! A
thing hideous — impish — demoniac! A thing purple
and dripping with blood — ghastly — unthinkable —
monstrous — a spectre of nightmare dreams !

And suddenly the doctor lifted his hand and smote
it ; and the mouth of the thing opened, and there came
forth a purplish froth — and then a cry! It was a
sound like a tin-pan beaten — a sound that was itself
a living presence, an apparition; a thing superhuman,
out of another world — like the wailing of a lost spirit,
terrifying to every sense! With Thyrsis it was like
the falling down of towers within him — ^his whole be-
ing collapsed, and he sunk down upon the bed, sobbing,
choking, convulsed.

§ 11. When he looked up again the elder nurse
had the baby in her arms ; and there was a wan smile
on Corydon's face.

The doctor's hand was in the ghastly wound, and
he was talking to the young nurse, giving her instruc-
tion, in a strange, monotonous tone. "The placenta,"
he was saying, "often has to be removed; we do it by

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED

twisting it round and round — very gently, of course.
Then it comes — so !"

There came a rush of blood, and Thyrsis turned
away his head.

"Give me the basin," said the doctor. "There! —
And now the next thing is to see that the uterus con-
tracts immediately. We assist it by compressing the
walls, thus. It must be tightly bandaged."

Thyrsis had turned to see the child. He looked at
it, and clenched his hands to control his emotions. Yes,
it was a man ! it was a man ! Not a monster, not a
demon — a baby !

His boy! himself! God, what a ghastly thing to
realize! It had his forehead, it had his nose! It was
a caricature of himself ! A caricature grotesque and
impish, and yet one that no human being could mistake
— a caricature by the hand of a master !

And it was a living thing! It had power of motion
— it twisted and writhed, it bent its arms and legs ! It
winked its eyelids, it opened and shut its mouth, it
breathed and made sounds ! And it had feeling, too !
It had cried out when it was struck!

Gently, with one finger, he touched it ; and the con-
tact with its flesh sent a shudder through every nerve
of him. His child ! His child ! And a hving child ! A
creature that would go on ; that would eat and sleep and
grow, that would learn to make sounds, and to under-
stand things ! That would come to think and to will !
That would be a man !

"Is it — ^is it all right?" he asked the nurse, in a
trembling whisper.

"It's a magnificent boy," she said. And then she
struck a match, and held the light in front of its eyes ;

284 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and the eyes turned to follow the light. "He sees!"
she said.

Yes, he could see ! And Thyrsis had already heard
that he could speak! What could it not do — this mar-
vellous object! It was Nature's supreme miracle — ^it
was the answer to all the riddles, the solution of aU the
mysteries ! It was a vindication of the subterfuges, a
reward for the sacrifices, a balm for the pain ! It was
the thing for which all the rest had been, it was the
crown and consummation of their love — it was Life's
supreme shout of triumph and exultation!

The nurse was holding the child up before Cory-
don ; and she was gazing at it, she was feeding her eyes
upon it. And oh, the smile that came upon her facs
— the ineffable smile! The pride, and the relief, and
the beatific happiness ! This thing she had done — ^it
was her act of creation ! Her battle that had been
fought, her victory that had been won ; and now they
brought her the crown and the guerdon! To Thyrsis
there came suddenly the words of Jesus : "A woman
when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour
hath come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child,
she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a
man is born into the world." And he sunk down beside
the bed, and caught the woman's hand in his, and began
to sob softly to himself.

§ 12. Later on he went into the street. Evening
was come again — for twenty-two hours that siege had
lasted! And the boy had eaten nothing since noon of
the day before, and he was weak and dizzy.

But how strange the world seemed to him all at
once! Peopled with phantom creatures, that came he
knew not whence, and went he knew not whither I Crea-

THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 285

tures of awe and horror, who came out of chaos, and
went back into annihilation ! Who were flung here and
there by cosmic forces, played with by tragic destinies !
And all of them without any sense of the perpetual
marvel of their own being! They ate and dressed and
slept, they laughed and played and worked, they hated
and loved and got and spent, with no thought of the
wonder of their lightest breath, with no sense of the
terrors that ringed them about — the storms that swept
them hither and thither, the milHon miracles that were
wrought for them every instant of their lives !

He went into a restaurant, and sat down ; and in the
seat beside him, close at his elbow, was a man. He was
a fat man — eating roast pork, and apple-sauce, and
mashed potatoes, and bread. And Thyrsis looked at
him with wondering eyes. "Man," he imagined himself
saying, "do you know how you came into this world?
A thing impish, demoniac — purple and dripping with
blood — a spectre of nightmare dreams.?"

"W-what.!"' the man gasped.

"And you know nothing of the pain that it cost !
You have no sense of the strangeness of it! You never
think what your coming meant to some woman !"

And then — in the seat opposite was a woman; and
Thyrsis watched her.

"You !" he thought, "a woman ! Can it be that you
know what you are.? The fate that you play with —
the power that dwells in you ! To create new life, that
may be handed down through endless ages !"

Thyrsis did not say these things ; they were what
he wanted to say — what he thought that he ought to
say. But then he reminded himself that these things
were forbidden; these mighty facts of child-birth, of
life-creation — they might not be spoken about! They

286 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

must be kept hidden, veiled with mystery — if one wished
to refer to them, he must employ metaphors and polite
evasions.

And as Thyrsis sat and thought about this, he
clenched his hands. Some day the world would hear
about it — some day the world would think about it!
Some day people would behold life — ^would realize what
it was and what it meant. They did not realize it now
— else how could it be that women, who bore the race
with so much pain and sorrow, should be drudges and
slaves, or the ornaments and playthings of men? Else
how could it be that hf e, which cost such a fearful price,
should be so cheap upon the earth? For every man
that lived and walked alive, some woman had had to
bear this agony; and yet men were pent up in mines
and sweatshops, they were ground, up in accidents in
factories and mills — nay, worse than that, were dressed
up in gaudy uniforms, and armed with rifles and ma-
chine-guns, and marched out to slaughter each other
by tens and hundreds of thousands!
' So, as he walked the streets that night, Thyrsis
made a vow. Some day he would put before the world
this vision that had come to him, some day he would
blast men's souls with it. He would shake them with
this horror, he would thrill them with this sense of the
infinite preciousness and holiness of hfe! He would
drive it into them like a barbed arrow — that never
afterwards in all their lives would they be rid of.
Never afterwards would they dare to mock, never
afterwards would they be able to rest until these things
had been done away with, imtil these horrors had been
driven from the earth.

PART II

Loves Captivity

Book VIII
THE CAPTIVE BOUND

They sat with the twilight shadows about them.
Memories too poignant assailed them, and her hand
trembled as it lay upon his arm.

"How strange it was!" she whispered. "Have we
kept the faith?"

"Who knows?" he answered; and vn a low voice he
read —

"And long the way appears, which seemed so short
To the less practised eye of sanguine youth;
And high the rnount aim-tops, in cloudy air.
The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth,
Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!"

§ 1. This was a golden hour in Thyrsis' life. The
gates of wonder were flung open, and all things were
touched with a new and mystic glow. He scarcely
realized it at the time ; for once he was too much moved
to think about his own emotions, the artist was alto-
gether lost in the man. Even the room in which he
lodged was relieved of its sordidness ; it was a thing
that men had made, and so a part of the mystery of
becoming. He yearned for some one to whom he could
impart his great emotion ; but because of the loneliness
of his life he could find no one but the keeper of his
lodging-house. Even she became a human thing to
him, because of her interest in the great tidings. If
all the world loved a lover, it loved yet more one through
whom the supreme purpose of love had been accom-
plished.

Thyrsis went each day to the hospital, to watch the
new miracle unfolding itself; to see the Child asserting
its existence as a being with a life of its own. He could
never tire of watching it ; he watched it asleep, with the
faint heaving of its body, and the soft, warm odor
that clung to it ; he watched its awakenings — the open-
ing of its eyes, and the sucking movements that it made
perpetually with its lips. They had dressed it up now,
and hid some of its strangeness ; but each morning the
nurse would undress it, and give it a bath ; and then he
marvelled at the short crooked legs, and the tiny red
hands that clutched incessantly at the air, and the
strange prehensile feet, that carried one back to distant

289

290 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

ages, hinting at the secrets of Nature's workshop.
Sometimes they would permit him to hold this mystic
creature in his arms — after much exhortation, and as-
surance that his left arm was properly placed at the
back of its head. One found out in this way what a
serious business life really was.

Corydon lay back among her pillows and smiled at
these things. Most wonderful it was to him to see how
swiftly she recovered from her ordeal, how hourly the
flush of health seemed to steal back into her cheeks.
He became ashamed of the memory of his convulsive
anguish and his blind rebellions. He saw now that her
pain had not been as other pain ; it was a constructive
pain, a part of the task of her life. It was a battle in
which she had fought and conquered; and now she sat,
throned in her triumphal chariot, acclaimed by the
plaudits of a multitude of hopes and joys unseen.

There came the miracle of the milk. Incessantly the
Child's lips moved, and its hands groped out; it was
an embodied demand for new experience — for life, it
knew not what. But Nature knew, and had timed the
event to this hour. And Thyrsis watched the phe-
nomenon, marvelling — as one marvels at the feat of
engineers, who tunnel from opposite sides of a mountain,
and meet in the centre without the error of an inch.

It was in accordance with the impression which Cory-
don made upon him, as a dispenser of abundance, a
goddess of fruitfulness, that there should have been
more milk than the Child needed. The balance had to
be drawn ofl' with a little vacuum-pump ; and Thyrsis
would watch the tiny jets as they sprayed upon the
glass bulb. The milk was rich and golden-hued; he
tasted it, with mingled wonder and shuddering.

These procedures filled the room with a warm, luscious

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 291

odor, as of a dairy ; they were eminently domestic pro-
cedures, such as in fancy he had been wont to tease
her about. But he had few jests at present — he was
in the inner chambers of the temple of life, and hushed
and stilled with awe. The things that he had witnessed
in that room were never to be forgotten ; each hour he
pledged himself anew, to the uttermost limits of his
life. The voice of skeptic reason was altogether silent
in him now. And also he was interested to observe that
all protest was ended in Corydon ; the impulses of
motherhood had now undisputed sway in her.

§ 2. But even in such an hour of consecration, the
sordid world outside would not leave him unmolested-
It was as if the black clouds had parted for a moment,
while the sunlight poured through ; and now again they
rolled together. The great surgeon, who had told
Thyrsis that he would wait for his money, professed now
to have forgotten his agreement. Perhaps he had
really forgotten it — ^who could tell, with the many things
he had upon his mind.'' At any rate, Corydon found
herself suddenly confronted with a biU, which she was
powerless to pay ; with white cheeks and trembling lips
she told Thyrsis about it — and so came more worry and
humihation. The very food that she ate became taste-
less to her, because she felt she had no right to it ; and
in a few days she was begging Thyrsis to take her
away.

So he helped to carry her downstairs, and back to her
parents' home; and then he returned to his own lonely
room, and sat for hours in the bitter cold, with his
teeth set tightly, and the nails dug into the palms of
his hands. It so happened that just then the editor
was beginning to change his mind about "The Hearer

292 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

of Truth" ; and so he had new agonies of anxiety and
disappointment.

Again he might not come to see Corydon; and this
led to a great misfortune. For she could not do with-
out him now, her craving for him was an obsession ; and
so she left her bed too soon, and climbed the stairs to
his room. Again and again she did this, in spite of
his protests ; and when, a little later, the doctors found
that she had what they called "womb-trouble^', they
attributed it to this. Perhaps it was not really so, but
Corydon believed it, and through all the years she laid
upon it the blame for innumerable headaches and back-
aches. Thus an episode that might have been soon
forgotten, stayed with her, as the symbol of aU the
agonies of which her life was made.

She would come, bringing the baby with her; and
they would lay it upon the bed, and then sit and talk,
for hours upon hours, wrestling with their problems.
Later on, when Corydon was able, they would go to
the park, craving the fresh air. But in midwinter
there were few days when they could sit upon a bench
for long; and so they would walk and walk, until
Corydon was exhausted, and he would have to help her
back to the room.

Thyrsis in these days was like a wild animal in a
cage; pacing back and forth and testing every corner
of his prison. But they never thought of giving up;
never in all their lives did that possibility come into their
discourse. And doggedly, blindly, they kept on with
their studies. Corydon mastered new lists of German
words, and they read Freitag's "Verlorene Handscrift"
together, and von Scheffel's "Ekkehard", and even at-
tempted "Iphigenie auf Tauris" — though in truth they
found it difficult to detach themselves to quite that ex-

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 293

tent from the world of every-day. It is not an easy
matter to experience the pure katharsis of tragedy, with
a baby in the room who -has to be nursed every hour
or two, and who is liable to awaken at any moment and
make some demand.

He was such an intricate and complicated baby, with
so many things to be understood — ^belly-bands and
diapers and irrational length of skirts. Sometimes,
when Corydon was quite exhausted, the attending to
these matters fell to Thyrsis, who became for the time
a most domestic poet. He once sent an editorial-room
into roars of merriment by offering to review a book
upon the feeding of infants. But he told himself that
even the hilarious editors had been infants once upon
a time; and he had divined that there were secrets about
life to be learned, and great art-works to be dreamed,
even amid belly-bands and diapers. Also, Thyrsis would
brave a great deal of ridicule in order to be paid a
dollar for the reading of a book that he really wanted
to read. For books that one wanted to read came so
seldom ; and dollars were so difficult to earn !

It seemed as if the task grew harder every week. He
went without cuffs, and wore old and frayed collars,
and washed his solitary necktie until it was threadbare,
and lived upon prunes and crackers, and gave up the
gas-stove in his room — and still he could scarcely man-
age to get together the weekly rent. He studied the
magazines in the libraries, and racked his wits for new
ideas to interest their editors. He haunted editorial-
rooms until his presence became a burden, and he
brought new agonies and humiliations upon himself. He
would part from Corydon in the afternoon, and shut
himself in his room ; and sitting in bed to keep warm, he
would work until midnight at some new variety of pot-

294 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

boiler. After which he would go out to walk and clear
his brain — and even then, exhausted as he was, his vision
would come to him again, wonderful and soul-shating.
So he would walk on, and go back to write until nearly
dawn at something he really loved.

§ 3. It was so that he wrote his poem, "Caradrion".
It was out of thoughts of Corydon, and of the tears
which they shed in each other's presence, that this poem
was made. Thyrsis had a fondness for burrowing into
strange old books, in which one found the primitive
wonder of the soul of man, first awakening to the mys-
tery of life. Such a book was Physiologus, with his
tales of strange beasts and magic jewels. "There is a
bird called Caradrion", Thyrsis had read. . . . "And
if the sick man can be healed, Caradrion goes to him,
and touches him upon the mouth, and takes his sickness
from him; and so the man is made well." And out of
this hint he had fashioned the legend of the two children
who had grown up together in "the little cot, fringed
round with tender green" ; one of them Cedric, and one
Eileen — for he had given the names that Corydon pre-
ferred.

They grew "unto the days of love", so the story
ran —

"And Cedric bent above her, stooping light.
To press a kiss upon her tender cheek.
And said, 'Eileen, I love thee ; yea I love.
And loved thee ever, thou my soul's delight.'

So time sped on, untU there came

"To Cedric once a strange unlovely thought.
That haunted him and would not let him be.

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 295

'Eileen,' he said, 'there is a thing called death.
Of which men speak with trembling at the lips ;
And I have thought how it would be with me
If I should never gaze upon thee more.' "

So Cedric went to find out about these matters ; he
sought a witch — "the haggard woman, held in awe."

"He found her crouching by a caldron fire;
Far gleams of light fled through the vault away.
And tongues of darkness flickered on the wall.
Then Cedric said, 'I seek the fate to know'.
And the witch laughed, and gazed on him and sang :

'Fashioned in the shadow-land.

Out into darkness hurled;
Trusted to the Storm-wind's hand.
By the Passion-tempest whirled!
Ever straining,
Never gaining,
Never keeping.

Young or old!
Whither going
Never knowing.
Wherefore weeping,
Never told I
Rising, falling, disappearing,
Seeking, calling, hating, fearing;
Blasted by the lightning shock,
Trampled in the earthquake rock;
Were I man I would not plead
In the roll of fate to read!'

296 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"Then Cedric shuddered, but he said again,
'I seek the fate,' and the witch waved her hand;
And straight a peal of thunder shook the ground,
And clanged and battered on the cavern walls.
Like some huge boulder leaping down the cliff.
And blinding light flashed out, and seething fire
Shattered the seamy crags and heaving floor."

And so in a vision of terror Cedric saw the little vale,
and the cot "fringed round with tender green" ; and
upon the lawn he saw Eileen, lying as one dead.

"And Cedric sprang, and cried, 'My love! Eileen!'
And on the instant came a thunder-crash
Like to the sound of old primeval days.
Of mountain-heaving shock and earthquake roar.
Of whirling planets shattered in the dark."

And so, half wild with grief and despair, Cedric
wandered forth into the world ; and after great suff^cr-
ing, the birds took pity upon him, and gave him ad-
vice-— that he should seek Caradrion.

" 'Caradrion ?' cried Cedric, starting up,
'Speak swiftly, ere too late, where dwelleth he.'"
'Ah, that I know not,' spake the little voice,
'Yet keep thy courage, seek thou out the stork.
The ancient stork that saw from earliest days,
Sitting in primal contemplation lost.
Sphinx-like, seraphic, and oracular,.
Watching the strange procession of men's dreams.' "

But the stork was cruel and would not heed him, and
led Cedric a weary chase through the marshes and the
brakes. But Cedric pursued, and finally seized the bird
by the throat, and forced the secret from him —

THE CAPTIVE BOUND »97

" 'Fare southward still,
Fronting the sun's midnoon, all-piercing shaft,
Unto the land where daylight burns as fire;
Where the rank earth in choking vapor steams,
And fierce luxurious vegetation reeks.
So shalt thou come upon a seamed rock.
Towering to meet the sun's fierce-flashing might.
Baring its granite forehead to the sky.
There on its summit, in a cavern deep.
Dwells what thou seekest, half a bird, half man,
Caradrion, the consecrate to pain.' "

Then came the long journey and the search for the
seamed rock.

" 'Twas night ; and vapors, curling, choked the ground,
And the rock writhed like flesh of one in pain.
But Cedric mounted up to find the cave.
Crying aloud : 'I seek Caradrion.'
And so, till from the cavern depth a voice:

'Come not, except to sorrow thou be born.'
And Cedric, panting, stretched his shrunken arms :

'Another's sorrow would I change to joy,
And mine own joy to sorrow; help thou me.'
To which the voice, sunk low, replied: 'Come thou.'
And Cedric came, unfearing, in the dark,
And saw in gloomy night a form in pain,
With wings stretched wide, and beating faint and
fast.

'Art thou Caradrion.?' he murmured swift.
And echo gave reply, 'Caradrion'."

So Cedric told of his errand, and pleaded for help;
and he heard the answer of the voice:

598 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

•" 'Yea, I can save her, if thou be a soul

That can dare pain and face the rage of fate ;
A soul that feareth not to look on death.'

'Speak on,' said Cedric, shaking, and he spoke:

'This is my law, that am Caradrion,
Whose way is sorrow and whose end is death ;
That by my pain some fleeting grace I win.
Some joy unto another I can give.
Far through this world of woe I seek, and find
Some soul crushed utterly, and steeped in pain ;
And when it sleeps, I stoop on silent wing.
And with a kiss take all its woe away —
Take it for mine, and then into this cave
Return alone, the blessing's price to pay.'
Then up sprang Cedric. 'Nay,' he cried, 'then swift.
Ere hfe be gone !' But once more spake the voice :

'Nay, boy, my race is run, my power is spent;
This hope alone I give thee, as thou wilt;
Whoso stands by and sees my heart-throb cease,
Who tastes its blood, my power and form are his.
And forth he fares in solitary flight,
Caradrion, the consecrate to pain.
And so my word is said ; now hide thee far
In the cave's night, and wrestle there in prayer.'
But Cedric said, 'My prayer is done; I wait.'
So in the cave the hours of night sped by.
And sounds came forth as when a woman fights
In savage pain a life from hers to free."

Then in the dawn a dark shadow flew from the cave,
and sped across the blue, and came to the little vale,
where Eileen lay dying, as he had seen her in the vision
in the "haggard woman's" cavern.

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 299

"Then Cedric sprang, and cried, 'My love ! Eileen !'

And Eileen heard him not ; nor knew he wept. —

For mighty sorrow burst from out his heart.

And flooded all his being, and he sunk.

And moaned : 'Eileen, I love thee ! Yea, I love,

And loved thee ever ; and I can not think

That I shall never gaze upon thee more.

Mt hfe for thine — ah, that were naught to give,

Meant not the gift to see thee nevermore !

Never to hear thy voice. Nay, nay, Eileen,

Gaze on me, speak to me, give me but one word,

And I will go and never more return.'

But Eileen answered not; he touched her hand,

And she felt nothing. Then he whispered, low,

'Oh, may God keep thee — for it must be done —

Guard thee, and bless thee, thou mv soul's delight!

And when thou waken'st, wilt thou think of me,

Of Cedric, him that loved thee, oh so truer

Nav, for they said thou shoiddst no sorrow know.

And that would be a sorrow, yea, it would.

And must thou then forget me, thou my love.''

And canst not give me but one single word.

To tell me that I do not die in vain?

Gaze at me, Eileen, see, thy love is here,

Here as of old, above thee stooping light.

To press a kiss upon thy tender lips. —

Ah, I can kiss thee — kiss thee, my Eileen,

Kiss as of yore, with all my passion's woe!'

And as he spoke he pressed her to his heart.

Long, long, with yearning, and he felt the leap

Of molten metal through his throbbing veins ;

His eyes shot fire, and anguish racked his hmbs.

And he fell back, and reeled, and clutched his brow.

An instant only gazed he on her face,

800 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

And saw new life within her gray cheek leap,

And her dark eyelids tremble. Then with moan,

And fearful struggle, swift he fled away.

That she might nothing of his strife perceive.

And then, reminded of his gift of flight,

He started from the earth, and beat aloft.

Each sweep of his great wings a torture-stroke

Upon his fainting heart. And thus away.

With languid flight he moved, and Eileen, raised

In new-born joy from off her couch of pain,

Saw a strange bird into the distance fade."

And so Cedric went back. to the seam&d rock, and
there he heard a voice calling, "I seek Caradrion !" And
as before he answered,

"Come not, except to sorrow thou be born !"

And again, in the cave —

"The hours of night sped by.
And sounds came forth as when a woman fights
In savage pain, a life from hers to free.

But Eileen dwelt within the happy vale.
Thinking no thought of him that went away."

§ 4. This had come so very easily to Thyrsis that
he could not believe that it was good. "Just a little
story," he said to Corydon, when he read it to her,
and he was surprised to see how it affected her — how
the tears welled into her eyes, and she clung to him,
sobbing. It meant more to her than any other thing

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 301

that he had written; it was the very voice of theii^
tenderness and their grief.

Then Thyrsis took it to the one editor he knew who
was a lover of poetry, and was surprised again, at
this man's delight. But he smiled sadly as he realized
that the editor did not use poetry — they did not praise
so recklessly when it was a question of something to be
piirchased !

"The poem is too long for any magazine," was the
verdict, "and it's not long enough for a book. And
besides, poetry doesn't sell." But none the less Thyrsis,
who would never take a defeat, began to offer it about ;
and so "Caradrion" was added to the list of stamp-con-
suming manuscripts, and set out to see the world at
the expense of its creator's stomach.

So there was one more wasted vision, one more futile
effort — and one more grapple with despair, in the hours
when he and his wife sat wrapped in a blanket in the
tenement-room. Corydon was growing more nervous
and imhappy every day, it seemed to him. There were,
apparently, endless humiliations to be experienced by
a woman "whose husband did not support her". Some
zealous relative had suggested to her the idea that the
"hall-boys" might think she was not really married;
and so now she was impelled to speculate upon the
psychology of these Ethiopian functionaries, and look
for slights and disapproval from them !

Thyrsis, from much work and little sleep, was hag-
gard and wild of aspect; the cry of the world, "Take
a position !" rang in his ears day and night. The
springs of book-reviews had dried up entirely, and by
sheer starvation he was forced to a stage lower yet.
A former college friend was editing a work of "con-
temporary biography", and offered Thyrsis some hack-

302 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

writing, li meant the carrying home of huge bundles
of correspondence from the world's most brightly-shin-
ing lights, and the making up of biographical sketches
from their eulogies of themselves. With every light
there came a portrait, showing what manner of light
it was. As for Thyrsis, he did his writing with the
feeling that he would like to explore with a poniard
the interiors of each one of these people.

For nearly three months now an eminent editor had
been trying to summon up the courage to accept "The
Hearer of Truth". He had written several letters to
tell the author how good a work it was ; and now that
it was to be definitely rejected, he soothed his conscience
by inviting the author to lunch. The function came
off at one of the most august and stately of the city's
clubs, a marble building near Fifth Avenue, where
Thyrsis, with a new clean collar, and his worn shoes
newly shined, passed under the suspicious eyes of the
liveried menials, and was ushered before the eminent
editor. About the vast room were portraits of by-
gone dignitaries ; and there were great leather-uphols-
tered arm-chairs in which one might see the dignitaries
of the present — some of them with little tables at their
sides, and decanters and soda and cracked ice. They
went into the dining-room, where everyone spoke and
ate in whispers, and the waiters flitted about like black
and white ghosts ; and while Thyrsis consumed a cupful
of cold bouillon, and a squab en casserole, and a plate
of what might be described as an honorific salad, he
listened to the soft-voiced editor discussing the prob-
lem of his future career.

The editor's theme was what the public wanted. The
world had existed for a long time, it seemed, and was
not easily to be changed ; it was necessary for an author

THE CAPTIVE BOUND

to take its prejudices into consideration — especially if
he was young, and unknown, and — er — dependent upon
his own resources. It seemed to Thyrsis, as he listened,
that the great man must have arranged this luncheon
as a stage-setting for his remarks — ^planning it on pur-
pose to Hght a blaze of bitterness in the soul of the
hungry poet. "Look at me,". he seemed to say — "this
is the way the job is done. Once I was poor and un-
known like you — actually, though you might not credit
it, a raw boy from the country. But I had taste and
talent, and I was judicious ; and so now for thirty years
I have been at the head of one of the country's leading
magazines. And see — by my mere word I am able to
bring you here into the very citadel of power ! For
these men about you are the masters of the metropolis.
There is a rich publisher — his name is a household word
— and you saw how he touched me on the shoulder.
There is an ex-mayor of the city — ^you saw how he
nodded to me ! Yonder is the head of one of the oldest
and most exclusive of the city's landed families — even
with him I am acquainted! And this is power! You
may know it by all these signs of mahogany furniture,
and leather upholstery, and waiters of reverential de-
portment. You may know it by the signs of respecta-
bility and awesomeness and chaste abundance. Make
haste to pay homage to it, and enroll yourself in its
service !"

Thyrsis held himself in, and parted from the editor
with all courtesy; but then, as he walked down Fifth
Avenue, his fury burst into flame. Here, too, was
power — here, too, the signs of it ! Palaces of granite
and marble, and towering apartment-hotels ; an endless
vista of carriages and automobiles, with rich women
lolling in them, or descending into shops whose windows

304 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

blazed with jewels and silver and gold. Here were the
masters of the metropolis, the masters of life; the dis-
pensers of patronage — that "public" which he had to
please. He would bring his vision and lay it at their
feet, and they would give him or deny him opportunity !
And what was it that they wanted.'' Was it worship
and consecration and love.' One could read the answer
in their purse-proud glances ; in the barriers of steel
and bronze with which they protected the gates of their
palaces ; in the aspects of their flunkeys, whose casual
glances were like blows in the face. One could read
the answer in the pitiful features of the little errand-
girl who went past, carrying some bit of their splendor
to them; or of the ragged beggar, who hovered in the
shelter of a side-street, fearing their displeasure. No,
they were not lovers of Ufe, and protectors ; they were
parasites and destroyers, devourers of the hopes of
humanity! Their splendors were the distilled essence
of the tears and agonies of millions of defeated people
— their jewels were drops of blood from the heart of
the human race!

§ 5. So, with rage and bitterness, Thyrsis was gnaw-
ing out his soul in the night-time ; distilling those fierce
poisons which he was to pour into the next of his works
— the most terrible of them all, and the one which the
world would never forgive him.

There came another episode, to bring matters to a
crisis. In the far Northwest lived another branch of
Thyrsis' family, the head of which had become what
the papers called a "lumber-king". One of this great
man's radiant daughters was to be married, and the
family made the selecting of her trousseau the occa-
sion for a flying visit to the metropolis. So there were

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 305

family reunions, and Thyrsis was invited to bring his
wife and call.

Corydon voiced her perplexity.

"What do they want to see us for?" she asked.

"I belong to their line," he said.

"But — you are poor!" she exclaimed.

"I know," he said, "but the family's the family, and
they are too proud to be snobbish."

"But — why do they ask me?"

Thyrsis pondered. "They know we have published
a book," he said. "It must be their tribute to litera-
ture."

"Are they people of culture?" she asked.

"Not unless they've tried very hard," he answered.
"But they have old traditions — and they want to be
aristocratic."

"I won't go," said Corydon. "I couldn't stand them."

And so Thyrsis went alone — to that same temple of
luxury where he had called upon the college-professor.
And there he met the lumber-king, who was tall and
imposing of aspect ; and the lumber-queen, who was
verging on stoutness ; and the three lumber-princesses,
who were disturbing creatures for a poet to gaze upon.
It seemed to Thyrsis that he had been dwelling in the
slums all his life — so sharp was the shock which came
to him at the meeting with these young girls. They
were exquisite beyond telling : the graceful lines of their
figures, the perfect features, the radiant complexions ;
the soft, filmy gowns they wore, the faint, intoxicating
perfumes that clung to them, the atmosphere of serenity
which they radiated. There was that in Thyrsis which
thrilled at their presence — he had been born into such
a world, and might have had such a woman for his mate.

But he put such thoughts from him — he had made his

306 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

choice long ago, and it was not the primrose-path.
Perhaps he was over-sensitive, acutely aware of him-
self as a strange creature with no cuffs, and with
hardly any soles to his shoes. And all the time of these
women was taken up by the arrival of packages of
gowns and millinery; their conversation was of dia-
monds and automobiles, and the forthcoming honey-
moon upon the Riviera. So it was hard for him not to
feel bitterness ; hard for him to keep his thoughts from
going back to the lonely child-wife wandering about in
the park — to all her deprivations, her blasted hopes
and dying glories of soul.

The family was going to the matinee; as there was
room in their car, they asked Thyrsis to go with them.
So he watched the lumber-king (who had refused to lend
him money, but had offered him a "position" ) draw out
a bank-note from a large roll, and pay for a box in
one of Broadway's great palaces of art. And now —
having been advised so often to study what the public
wanted — now Thyrsis had a chance to recline at his
ease and follow the advice.

"The Princess of Prague", it was called; it was a
"musical comedy" ; and evidently exactly what the pub-
lic wanted, for the house was crowded to the doors.
The leading comedian was said by the papers to be re-
ceiving a salary of a thousand dollars a week. He held
the center of the stage, clad in the costume of a lieu-
tenant of marines, and winked and grinned, and per-
formed antics, and sang songs of no doubtful signifi-
cance, and emitted a fusillade of cynical jests. He was
supposed to be half-dnmk, and making love to a run-
away princess — ^who would at one moment accept his
caresses, and then spurn him coquettishly, and then exe-
cute an unlovely dance with him. In between these di-

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 307

verting procedures a chorus would come on, a score or
so of highly-painted women, hopping and gliding about,
each time clad in new costumes more cunningly inde-
cent than the last.

From beginning to end of this piece there was not
a single line of real humor, a spark of human senti-
ment, a gleam of intelligence ; it was a kind of delirium
tremens of the drama. To "Thyrsis it seemed as if a
whole ciTrilization, with all its resources of science and
art — its music and painting and costumes, its poets
and composers, its actors, singers, orchestrg, and audi-
ence— ^had all at once fallen victims to an attack of St.
Vitus' dance. He sat and listened, while the theatre full
of people roared and howled its applause; while the
family beside him — mother and father and daughters —
laughed over jokes that made him ashamed to turn and
look at them. In the end the realization of what this
scene meant — ^not only the break-down of a civilization,
but the trap in which his own spirit was caught- — made
him sick and faint all over. He had to ask to be ex-
cused, and went out and sat in the lobby imtil the
"show" was done.

The family found him there, and the bride-to-be in-
quired if he "felt better" ; then, looking at his pale face,
an idea occurred to her, and after {i. bit of hesitation,
she asked him if he would not stay to dinner. In her
mind was the conflict between pity for this poor boy,
and doubt as to the fitness of his costume ; and Thyrsis,
having read her mind in a flash, was divided between his
humihation, and his desire for some food. In the end
the baser motive won ; he buried his pride, and went to
dinner. — And so, as the fates had planned it, the
impulse to his next book was bom.

308 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

§ 6. Theee came another guest to the meal — the
rector of the fashionable church which the family at-
tended at home. He was a young man, renowned for
the charm of his oratory ; smooth-shaven, pink-and-
white-cheeked, exquisite in his manners, gracious and
insinuating. His ideas and his language and his morals
were all as perfectly polished as his finger-nails ; and
never before in his life had Thyrsis had such a red rag
waved in his face. Biit he had come there for the din-
ner, and he attended to that, and let Dr. Holland pro-
vide the flow of soul; until at the very end, when the
doctor was sipping his demi-tasse.

The conversation had come, by some devious route,
to Vegetarianism ; and the clergyman was disapproving
of it. That made no difference to Thyrsis, who was not
a vegetarian, and knew nothing about it; but how he
hated the arguments the man advanced ! For that which
made the doctor an anti-vegetarian was an attitude to
life, which had also made him a Republican and an
Imperialist, a graduate of Harvard and a beneficiary
of the Apostolic Succession. Because life was a sur-
vival of the fittest, and because God had intended the
less fit to take the doctor's word as their sentence of
extermination.

The duty of animals, as the clergyman set it forth
to them, was to convert plant-tissue into a more con-
centrated and perfect form of nutriment. "The pro-
tein of animal flesh," he was saying, "is more nearly
allied to human tissue ; and so it is clearly more fitted
for our food."

Here Thyrsis entered the conversation. "Doctor
Holland," he said, mildly, "I should think it would occur
to you to follow your argument to its conclusion."

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 309

The other turned to look at him. "What conclu-
sion?" he asked.

"I should think you would become a cannibal," Thyr-
sis replied.

And then there was silence at the table. When Dr.
Holland spoke again it was to hurry the conversation
elsewhere; and from time to time thereafter he would
steal a puzzled glance at Thyrsis.

But this the boy did not see. His thoughts had
gone whirling on ; here, in this elegant dining-room, the
throes of creation seized hold of him. For this was the
image he had been seeking, the phrase that would em-
brace it all and express it all — the concentrated bitter-
ness of his poisoned life ! Yes, he had them ! He had
them, with all their glory and their power ! They were
Cannibals. Cannibals!

So, when he set out from the hotel, he did riot go
home, but walked instead for uncounted hours in the
park. And in those hours he lived through the whole
of his new hook, the unspeakable book — "The Higher
Cannibalism" !

In the morning he told Corydon about it. She cried
in terror, "But, Thyrsis, nobody would publish it!"

"Of course not," said he.

"But then," she asked, "how can you write it?"

"I shall write it," he said, "if I have to die when I
get through". So he shut himself up in his room once
more.

§ 7. A FAMOUS scientist began the story — reason-
ing along the lines of Dr. Holland's argument. The
grass took the inorganic matter, and made it into food ;
the steer ate the grass, and carried it to the next stage ;
and beyond that was one stage more. So the scientist

310 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

began making experiments — in a quiet way, of course.
He reported the results before a learned scientific
body, but his colleagues were so scandalized that the
matter was hushed up.

The seed had been sown, however, A younger man
took up the idea, and made researches in the South Seas
— substantiating the claim that those races which took
to anthropophagy had invariably supplanted the others.
The new investigator printed his findings in a book,
which was circulated privately ; and pretty soon he was
called into consultation by the master-mind of the coun-
try's finance — the richest man in the world. This man
was old and bald and feeble; and now suddenly there
came to him a new lease of life — new health and new
enthusiasm. It was given out that he had got it by
wandering about bare-footed in the grass, and playing
golf all day — an explanation which the public accepted
without question. No one remarked the fact that the
old man began devoting his wealth to the establishing
of foundling asylums ; nor did any one think it sus-
picious that the younger generation of this multi-mil-
lionaire should rise so suddenly to power and fame.

But there began to be strange rumors and suspicions.
There were young writers, who had developed a new
technique, and had carried poetic utterance to un-
dreamed of heights ; and in this poetry were cryptic
allusions, hints of diabolic things. A Socialist paper
printed the menu of a banquet given by these "Neo-
Nietzscheans", and demanded to know what one was to
understand by flet de mouton blanc, and wherein lay
the subtle humor of pate de petit bete. And at last the
storm broke — a youth scarcely in his teens pubUshed
a book of poems in which the dread secret was blazoned
forth to the world with mocking defiance. There were

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 311

frantic attempts to suppress this book, but they failed;
and then a prosecuting officer, eager for notoriety,
placed the youth upon trial for his life. And so the
issue was drawn.

The public at large awakened to a dazed realization
of the head-way which the new idea had made. It had
become a cult of the ruling-class, the esoteric religion
of the state; everywhere its defenders sprang up — ^it
seemed as if all the intellectual as well as the material
power of the community was under its spell. To oppose
it was not merely bad form — it was to incur a stigma
of moral inferiority, to be the victim of a "slave-ethic".

With the scientific world, of course, its victory was
speedy; the new doctrine was in line with recognized
evolutionary teaching. The great names of Darwin
and Spencer were invoked in its support ; and, of course,
when it came to economic science, there could be no two
opinions. Had laissez-faire ever meant anything, if
laissez-faire did not mean this?

At the very outset, the country was startled by the
publication of a book by a college professor, famed
as a leading sociologist, in which the case was presented
without any attempt at sophistication. It was a fact,
needing no attestation, that the mass of mankind had
always lived in a state of slavery. At the present hour,
under the forms of democracy, there were a quarter of
a million men killed every year in industry, and half a
million women living by prostitution, and two million
children earning wages, and ten million people in want ;
and in comparison with these things, how humane was
the new cult, how honest and above-board, how clean
and economical! For the first time there could be of-
fered to the submerged tenth a real social function to
be performed. Once let the new teaching be applied

S12 LO\"E'S PILGRDIAGE

upon a world-wide scale, and the proletariat might fol-
low its natural impulse to multiply without limit : there
would be no more "race-suicide" to trouble the souls
of eminent statesmen.

And this at the time when the attention of the com-
munity was focussed upon the new cause c&ebre!
When the public prints were filled with an acrimonious
discussion as to the meaning of the instructions given
to the jury. If anyone chose to will his body to a pur-
chaser, said the judge, and then go and commit suicide,
there was no law to prevent him ; and, of course, the sub-
sequent purposes of the purchaser had nothing to do
with the point at issue. This was a matter of taste —
here the learned justice rapped for order — a matter of
prejudice, largely, and the question at issue was one of
law. There was no law controlling a man's dietetic
idiosyncrasies, and it was to be doubted if constitu-
tionally any such law would stand — certainly not in a
federal court, unless it chamced to be a matter of inter-
state commerce.

In their bewilderment and dismay, the people turned
to the Church. Surely the doctrines of Christianity
would stand like a barricade against this monstrous
cult. But already within the Church there had been
rumors and disturbances ; and now suddenly a bishop
arose and voiced his protest against this attempt "to
drag the Church into the mire of political controversy."'
It must be made perfectly clear, said the bishop, that
Christianity was a religion, and not a dietetic dogma.
Its purpose was to save the souls of men, and not to
concern itself with their bodies. It had been stated
that we should have the poor always with' us ; which
made clear the futility of attempting to change the
facts of Nature. Also it was certain that the fovmder

THE CAPTIVE BOUND .313

of Christianity had been a meat-eater ; and though there
might be more than one interpretation placed upon his

command concerning httle children

There we might leave Thyrsis with the established
Church. He had it just where he wanted it, and he
shook it until its smoothly-shaven pink and white cheeks
turned purple, and the demi-tasse went flying out of
its beautifully manicured fingers! And while he did it
he laughed aloud in hideous glee, and in his soul was
a cry like the hunting-call of the lone gray wolf, that
he had heard at midnight in his wilderness camp. So
far a journey had come the little boy who had been
dressed up in scarlet and purple robes, and had carried
the bishop's train at the confirmation service ! And so
heavy a penalty did the church pay for its alliance
with "good society"!

§ S. Thyrsis paid a week's living expenses to have
this manuscript copied; and then he took it about to
the publishers. First came his friend Mr. Ardsley, who
had become his chief adviser. When Thyrsis went to
see him, Mr. Ardsley drew out an envelope from his
desk, and took from it the opinion of his reader.
" 'What in the world is the matter with this boy.-" "
he read. "That's the opening sentence."

And then he fixed his eyes upon the boy. "What in
the world is the matter ?" he asked.

Thyrsis sat silent ; there was no reply he could make.
He was strongly tempted to say to the man, "The mat-
ter is that I am not getting enough to eat!"

But already Thyrsis himself had judged "The
Higher Cannibalism" and repudiated it. It was born of
his pain and weakness, and it was not the work he had
come into the world to do. So at the end he had placed

314 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

a poem, which told of a visit from his muse, after
the fashion of Musset's "Nuits"; the muse had been
sad and silent, and in the end the poet had torn up the
product of his hours of despair, and had renewed his
faith with the gracious one.

Meantime the long winter months dragged by, and
still there was no gleam of hope. For Corydon it was
even harder than for her husband. He at least was
expressing his feelings, while she could only pine and
chafe, without any sort of vent. Her life was a matter
of colorless routine, in which each day was like the last,
except in increased monotony. She tried hard not to
let him see how she suffered; but sometimes the tears
would come. And her unhappiness was bad for the
child, which in the beginning had been robust and mag-
nificent, but now was not growing properly. Thyrsis
would have ridiculed the idea that nervousness could
affect her milk; but the time came when, in later life,
he saw the poisons of fatigue and fear in test-tubes, and
so he understood why the child had not been able to
lift its head until it was a year old, and had then
been well on the way to having "rickets."

All their life was so different from the way they had
dreamed it! The dream still lured them; but its voice
grew fainter and more remote. How were they to keep
it real to themselves, how were they to hold it? Their
existence was made up of endless sordidness, of dreary
commonplace, that opposed them with its passive inertia
where it did not actively attack them. "Ah, Thyrsis !"
Corydon would cry to him, "this will kill us if it lasts
too long!"

For one thing, they no longer heard any music at all.
She was not strong enough to practice the piano ; and
his violin was gone. Here in the great city an end-

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 315

less stream of concerts and operas and recitals flowed
past ; and here were they, like starving children who
press their faces against a pastry-cook's window and
devour the sweets with their eyes. Thyrsis kept up
with musical and dramatic progress by reading the ac-
counts in the papers and magazines ; but this was a
good deal like slaking one's thirst with a mirage. He
used to wonder sometimes if he were to write to these
great artists — would they invite him to hear them, or
would they too despise him ? He never had the courage
to try.

Once in the course of the long winter some one
presented Corydon with two tickets to the opera, and
they went together, in a state of utter bliss. It was an
unusual experience for Thyrsis, for their seats were
in the orchestra, and hitherto he had always heard his
operas from the upper rows in the fifth balcony, where
the air was hot and stifling, and the singers appeared
as a pair of tiny arms that waved, and a head (fre-
quently a bald head) that emitted a thin, far-distant
voice. This had become to him one of the conventions
of the opera ; and now to discover the singers as full-
sized human beings, with faces and legs and loud voices,
was very disturbing to his sense of illusion.

Also, alas, they had not been free to select the opera.
It was "La Traviata" ; and there was not much food for
their hungry souls in this farrago of artificiality and
sham sentiment. They shut their eyes and tried to en-
joy the music, forgetting the gallant young men of
fashion and their fascinating mistresses. But even the
music, it seemed, was tainted; or could it be, Thyrsis
wondered, that he could no longer lose himself in the
pure joy of melody.'' Many kinds of corruption he
had by this time learned about; the corruption of men.

316 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and of women, and of children ; the corruption of paint-
ing and sculpture, of poetry and the drama. But the
corruption of music was something which even yet he
could not face; for music was the very voice of the
soul — the well-spring from which life itself was derived.
Thyrsis thought, as he and Corydon wandered about
in the foyers of this palatial opera-house, was there
anywhere on earth a place in which heaven and
hell came so close together. A place where the lust
and pride of the flesh displayed themselves in all their
glory ; and in contrast with the purest ecstasies the
human spirit had attained! He pointed out one rich
dowager who swept past them ; her breasts all but j ost-
ling out of her corsage as she walked, her stomach
squeezed into a sort of armor-plate of jewels, her cheeks
powdered and painted, her head weighted with false hair
and a tiara of diamonds, her face like a mask of pride
and scorn. And then, in juxtaposition with that, the
Waldweben and the Feuerzauber, or the grim and awful
tragedy of the Siegfried funeral-march! There were
people in this opera-house who knew what such music
meant ; Thyrsis had read it in their faces, in that suffo-
cating top-gallery. He wondered if some day the de-
mons that were evoked by the music might not call to
them and lead them in revolt, to drive the money-
changers from the temple once again !

§ 9. Another editor was reading "The Hearer of
Truth," and a publisher was hovering on the brink of
venturing "The Higher Cannibalism"; and so the two
had new hopes to lure them on. When the spring-time
had come, they would once more escape from the city,
and would put up their tent on the lake-shore! They
fpent long afternoons picturing just how they would

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 317

live — what they would eat, and what they would wear,
and what they would study. As for Cedric — so they
had called the baby — they saw him playing beneath the
big tree in front of the tent. And what fun they would
have giving him his bath on the little beach inside the
point !

"I'll fix up a clothes-basket for him to sleep in !" de-
clared Thyrsis.

"Nonsense, dear!" said Corydon. "I've told you
many times before — we'll have to have a crib for him !"

"But why.'"' cried he; and there would foUow an
argument which gave pain to his economical soul.

Corydon declared herself willing to do her share in
the matter of saving money ; but it seemed to him that
whenever he suggested a concrete idea, there would be
objections. "We can get up at dawn," he would say,
"and save the cost of oil."

"Yes," she would answer.

"And we can do our own laundry," he would continue.
But immediately another argument would begin ; it was
impossible to persuade Corydon that diapers could be
washed in cold water, even when one had the whole of
the Great Lakes for a washtub.

They would go on to contemplate the glorious time
when they would have money enough to build a home
of their own, that could be inliabited in winter as well
as in summer ; Corydon always referred to it with the
line from "Caradrion" — "the little cot, fringed round
with tender green." It would be fine for the baby, they
agreed — he should never have to go back to the city
again. Thyrsis had a vision of him as he would be in
that home: a brown and freckled country boy, with
what were known, in the dialect of "dam-fool talk",
as "yagged panties and bare feets".

318 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

But Corydon would protest at that picture. "It's
all right," she said, "to put up with ugliness if you
have to. But what's the use of making a fetish of it?"

"It wouldn't be ugliness," replied he. "It would be
Nature ! 'Blessings on thee, little man !' "

"That's all very well. But I want Cedric to have
curls "

"Curls !" he cried. "And then a Fauntleroy suit, I
suppose !"

"No — at least not while we're poor. But I want him
to look decent "

"If you have curls, then you'll want a nurse-maid to
brush them!"

"Nonsense, Thyrsis ! Can't a mother take care of
her child's own hair.'"'

"Some mothers can — they have nothing better to do.
But if you were going in for the hair-dresser's art, why
did you cut off your own?"

And so would come yet new discussions. "You'll be
wanting me to maintain an establishment!" Thyrsis
would cry, whenever these aesthetic impulses manifested
themselves. He seemed to be haunted by that image of
an establishment. All married men came to it in the end
— there seemed to be something in matrimony that pre-
disposed to it ; and far better adopt at once the ideals
and habits of the gypsies, than to settle into respecta-
bility with a nurse-maid and a cook !

Thyrsis was under the necessity of sweeping clean
his soul, because of all the luxury and wantonness he
saw in this metropolis, and the madness to which it
goaded his soul. Some day fame would come to him,
he knew — wealth also,, perhaps ; and oh, there must be
one man in all the city who was not corrupted, who did
not learn extravagance and self-indulgence, who prac-

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 319

ticed as well as preached the life of faith! And so,
again and again, he and Corydon would renew the
pledges of their courtship-days — pledges to a discipline
of Spartan sternness.

Poor as he was, Thyrsis still found time to figure
over the things he meant to do when he got money : the
publishing-house that was to bring out his books at
cost, and the free reading-rooms and the circulating
libraries. Also, he wanted to edit a magazine ; for there
was a great truth which he wished to teach the world.
"We must make these things that we have suffered count
for something!" he would say to Corydon, again and
again. "We must use them to open people's eyes !"
He was thinking how, when at last he had escaped from
the pit, he would be in a position to speak for those
others who were left behind. Men would heed him then,
and he could show them how impossible it was for the
creative artist to do his work, and at the same time
carry on the struggle for bread. He would induce some
rich man to set aside a fund for the endowment of
young writers ; and so the man who had a real message
might no longer have to starve.

Thyrsis had by this time tried all the world, and he
knew that there was no one to understand. Just about
now he was utterly stranded, and had to borrow money
for even his next day's food. And oh, the humiliations
and insults that came with these loans! And worse yet,
the humiliations and insults that came without any
loans ! There was one rich man who advanced him ten
dollars ; Thyrsis, when he returned it, sent a check he
had received from some out-of-town magazine — and in
return was rebuked by the rich man for failing to in-
clude the "exchange" on the check. Thyrsis wrote
humbly to inquire what manner of thing the "exchange"

320 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

on a check might be; and learned that he was still in
the rich man's debt to the sum of ten cents !

His case was the more hopeless, he found, because
he was a married man. The world might have pardoned
a young free-lance who was willing to "rough it" and
take his chances for a while ; but a man who had a wife
and child — and was still prating about poetry ! To the
world the possession of a wife and child meant self-
indulgence ; and when a man had fallen into that trap,
he simply had to settle down and take the consequence.
How could Thyrsis explain that his marriage had not
been as other men's? How could he hint at such a
thing, without proving himself a cad?

§ 10. The work of "contemporary biography" had
come to an end; there followed weeks of seeking, and
then another opening appeared — Mr. Ardsley offered
him a chance to do some manuscript-reading. This
was really a splendid opportunity, for the work would
not be difficult, and the payment would be five dollars
for each manuscript. Thyrsis accepted joyfully, and
forthwith carried off a couple of embryo books to his
room.

It was a new and curious occupation, which opened
up to him whole worlds whose existence he had not
previously suspected. Through his review-writing he
had become acquainted with the books that had seen the
light of day ; now he made the startling discovery that
for every one that was bom, there were hundreds, per-
haps thousands, that died in the womb. He could see
how it went — the hordes of half-educated people who
read books and were moved to write something like
them. Each manuscript was a separate tragedy; and
often there would be a letter or a preface to make

THE CAPTIVE BOUND 321

certain that one did not miss thasense of it. Here would
be a settlement-worker, burning with a message, but
unable to draw a character or to write dialogue; here
would be a business-man, who had studied up the dialect
of the region where he spent his summer vacations, and
whose style was so crude that one winced as he turned
the pages ; here would be a poor bookkeeper, or a type-
writer, or other cog in the business machine, who had
read of the fortunes made by writers of fiction, and had
spent aU his hours of leisure for a year in composing
a tale of the grand monde, or some feeble imitation of
the sugar-coated "historical romance" of the hour.

Sometimes as he read these manuscripts, a shudder
would come over Thyrsis; how they made him realize
the odds in the game of life! These thousands and
tens of thousands panting and striving for success ;
and he lost in the throng of them! What madness it
seemed to imagine that he might climb over their heads
— that he had been chosen to scale the heights of
fame! Their letters and prefaces sounded like a satire
upon his own attitude, a reductio ad ahsurdiim of his
claims to "genius". Here, for instance, was a man who
wrote to introduce himself as America's first epic poet
— stating incidentally that he was an inspector of
gas-meters, and had a wife and six children. His poem
occupied some six hundred foolscap sheets, finely bound
up by hand; it set forth the soul-states of a Byron
from Alabama — an aristocratic hero who was refused
by the lady of his heart, and voiced his anger and per-
plexity in a long speech, two lines of which stamped
themselves forever upon the mind of the reader

"But I! he cried. My limbs are straight,
My purse well-filled, my veins all F. F. V. !"

322 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

As a method of earning one's living, this was almost
too good to be true. The worse the manuscripts were,
the easier was his task ; in fact, when he came upon one
which showed traces of real power and interest he
cursed his fate, for then it might take several days to
earn his five dollars. But for the most part the manu-
scripts were bad enough, and he could have earned a
year's income in a week, if only there had been enough
of them. So he made a great effort to succeed at the
work, and filled his reports with epigrams and keen
observations, carefully adapted to what he knew was
Mr. Ardsley's point of view. He allowed time for these
devices to be effective, and then paid a visit to find out
about the prospects.

"Mr. Ardsley," he began, "I am going to try to meet
you half way with a book."

"Ah!" said the other.

"I want to write a novel that you can publish. I
beheve that I can do it."

Mr. Ardsley warmed immediately. "I have always
been certain that you could," said he. He went on to
expound to Thyrsis the ethics of opportunism — how
it would not be necessary to be false to his convictions,
to write anything that he did not believe — but simply
to put his convictions into a popular form, and to
impart no more than the public could swallow at the
first mouthful.

Thyrsis told him the outline of a plot. He would
write a story of the struggles of a young author in the
metropolis — ^not such a young author as himself, a
rebel and a frenzied egotist, but a plain, everyday
young author whom other people could care about. He
had the "local color" for such a tale, and he could do

THE CAPTIVE BOUND

it without too much waste* of time. Mr. Ardsley
thought it an excellent idea.

After which Thyrsis came, very cautiously, to the
meat of the matter. "I want to get away into the
country to write it," he said; "and so I wanted to ask
you about the manuscripts you are sending me. Have
you foimd my work satisfactory?"

"Why, yes," said the other.

"And do you think ^ou can send them through the
summer?"

"I presume so. It depends upon how many come to
us."

"You — ^you couldn't arrange to let me have any more
of them.?"

"Not at present," said Mr. Ardsley. "You see, I
have regular readers, whose work I know. I'll send you
what I have to spare."

"Thank you," said Thyrsis. "I'll be glad to have
all you can give me."

So he went away ; and in the little room he and
Corydon had an anxious consultation. He had been
f^'etting about twenty dollars a month; which was not
enough for the family to exist upon. "Our only hope
is a new book," he declared ; and Corydon saw that was
the truth. "Each week that I stay here is a loss,"
he added. "I have to pay room-rent."

"But can you stand tenting out in April.?" asked
she.

"I'll chance it," he replied — "if you'll say the word."

She saw that her duty was before her ; she must
nerve herself and face it, though it tore her heart-
strings. She must stay and take care of the baby,
while he went away to work!

He sat and held her hands, and saw her bite her lips

324 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and fight to keep back the tears in her eyes. Their
hearts had grown together, so that it was like tearing
their flesh to separate them. They had never imagined
that such a thing could come into their lives.
"Thyrsis," she whispered — "you'll forget me!"
He pressed her hands more tightly. "No, dear!
No !" he said.

"But you'll get used to living without me !" she cried.
"And it's the time in my life when I need you most !"
"I will stay, dearest, if you say so."
She exclaimed, "No, no ! I must stand it !"
And seeing her grief, his heart breaking with pity,
a strange impulse came to Thyrsis. He took her hands
in his, and knelt down before her, and began to pray.
It had been years since he had thought of prayer, and
Corydon had never thought of it in her life. It came
from the deeps of him — a few stammering words,
simple, almost childish, yet exquisite as music. He
prayed that they might have courage to keep up the
fight, that they might be able to hold their love before
them, that nothing might ever dim their vision of each
other. It was a prayer without theology or meta-
physics— a prayer to the unknown gods ; but it set free
the well-spring of tenderness and pity within them;
and when he finished Corydon was sobbing upon his
shoulder.

Book IX
THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH

They were standing on the hiU^top, watching the
last glimmer of the sinking moon. As the faint per-
fwme of the clover came to them, upon the warm eve-
nrng wind, she sighed, and whispered —

"Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here!
'Mid city noise, not as with thee of yore,
Thyrsis! in reach of sheep-hells is my home!

She paused.

"Go on," he said, and she quoted —

"Then through the great town's harsh, heart-wearying
roar,
het in thy voice a whisper always come.
To chase fatigue and fear:
Why faintest thou? I wandered till I died.

Roam on! The light we sought is shining still."

§ 1. Thyrsis mad£ his plans and packed his few
belongings. There came another pass from the "higher
regions", and he took the night-train once more, and
came to the little town upon the shores of Lake On-
tario. Once more the sun shone on the crystal-green
water, and the cold breeze blew from off the lake. There
was still snow in the ravines of the deep woods, but
Thyrsis got his tent out of the farmer's barn, and
patched up the holes the mice had gnawed, and put it
up on the old f amihar spot.

It was strange to him to be there without Corydon.
There were so many things to remind him of her —
a sudden memory would catch him unawares, and stab
him like a knife. There was the rocky headland where
they had swam, and there was the pine-tree that the
lightning had splintered, one day while they were stand-
ing near. When darkness came, and he was unpacking
a tew old things that they had left up in the country,
his loneliness seemed to him almost more than he could
bear; he sat by the little stove, holding a pair of her
old faded slippers in his hands, and felt his tears trick-
ling down upon them.

But it took him only a day or two to drive such
things out of his mind. There was no time for senti-
ment now — it was "Clear ship for action!" For once
in his life he was free, and had a chance to work. He
was full of his talk with Mr. Ardsley, and meant to
do his best to be "practical." And so behold him wan-
dering about in the water-soaked forests, or tramping

327

328 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

the muddy roads, or sitting by his little stove while
the cold storms beat upon the tent — wrestling with
his unruly Pegasus, and dragging it back a hundred
times a day to what was proper, and human, and in-
teresting !

, The neighbors had warned him that it was too early
for tenting, but Thyrsis had vowed he would stand it.
And now, as if to punish him for his defiance, there
was emptied out upon him the cave of all the winds ;
for four weeks there were such storms of rain and sleet
and snow as the region had never known in April.
There were nights when he sat wrapped in overcoats
and blankets, with a fire in the stove; and still shiver-
ing for the gale that drove through the canvas.
There came one calm, starlit night when he lay for
hours almost frozen, and sat up in the morning to find
a glass of water at his bedside frozen solid. Thirteen
degrees the thermometer showed, according to the
farmer; and oh, the agony of getting out of bed, and
starting a fire with green wood! In the end Thyrsis
poured in half a can of kerosene, and got the stove red-
hot; and then he turned round to warm his back, and
smelled smoke, and whirled about to find his tent in a
blaze !

With a bucket of wkter and a broomstick he beat out
the fire, and went for a run to warm up. But when
he came back there was more wind, so that he could not
keep warm in the tent, and more rain, so that he could
not find shelter in the woods. In the end he discovered
a ruined barn, in a corner of which he would sit,
wrapped in his blankets and writing with cold fingers.

Perhaps all these mishaps had something to do with
the refusal of his ideas to flow. But apparently it was
in vain that Thyrsis tried at any time to work at things

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 329

that were interesting to other people. Perhaps he
could have worked better at them, if there had not been
so many things that were interesting to him. He
would find himself confronted with the image of the
society clergyman, or of the sleek editor in his club,
or some other memory out of the world of luxury and
pride. And each day came the newspaper, with its
burden of callousness and scorn ; and perhaps also a
letter from Corydon, with something to goad him to
new tilts with the enemies of his soul.

So, before long, almost without realizing it, he was
putting the "interesting" things aside, and girding
himself for another battle. His message was still un-
delivered ; and in vain he sought to content himself
by blaming the world for this. Until he had forced
the world to hear him, he had simply not yet done his
work. He must take his thought and shape it anew —
into some art-work finer, stronger, truer than he had
yet achieved.

Day after day he pondered this idea — eating with it
and walking with it and sleeping with it; until at last,.
of a sudden, the vision came to him. It came late at
night, while he was undressing; and he sat for five
or ten minutes, with his shirt half off, as if in a trance.
Then he put the shirt on again, and went out to wander
about the woods, laughing and talking to himself.

"Genius surrounded by Commercialism" — ^that was
his theme; and it would have to be a play. Its hero
would be a young musician, a mere boy, a master of
the demon-voices of the violin ; he would be rapt in his
vision, and around him a group of people who would
be embodiments of the world and all its forces of evil.
One by one they came trooping before Thyrsis' fancy,
with all their trappings of pomp and power, their great-

330 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

ness and their greed — sinister and cruel figures, but
also humorous, very creatures of the spirit of comedy !
Yes, he had a comedy this time — a real comedy !

§ 2. In this hour, of course, Thyrsis forgot all
About the "plot" he had outlined to Mr. Ardsley, and
About his promises to be "practical." Something arose
within him, imperious and majestic, and swept all this
■out of the way with one gesture of the hand. He
dropped everything else and plunged into the play.
Never yet in his life had anything taken hold of him
to such an extent ; it drove him so that he forgot to
eat, he forgot to sleep. He would work over some
part of it until he was exhausted — and then, without
warning, some other part would open out in a vista
before him, and he would spring up in pursuit of
that. Characters and episodes and dialogue, wild
humor, scalding satire, grim traged}^ — they thronged
and jostled and crowded one another in his imagination.

"The Genius" was the title of the play. Its prot-
agonist had come home after completing his education
in Vienna; and there was the family gathered to greet
him. Mr. Hartman, the father, was a wholesale grocer
— a business large enough to have brought wealth, but
painfully tainted with "commonness". Then thiere was
Mrs. Hartman, stout and tightly-laced, who had studied
the science of elegance while .her husband studied
sugar. There was the elder son, who under his mother's
guidance had married well; and Miss Violet Hartman,
who was looking up to the perilous heights of a foreign
alliance.

Only of late had the family come to realize what an
asset to their career this "Genius" might be. They
had humored him in his strange whim to devote his life

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH S31

to fiddling; money had been spent on him freely — ^he
brought home with him a famous Cremona instrument
for which three thousand dollars had been paid. But
now it was dawning upon them that this was an "ugly
duckling" ; he was to make his debut in the metropolis,
where an overwhelming triumph was expected ; and then
he would return to the home city in the middle West, and
would play at musicales, which even the most exclusive
of the "Slite" must attend.

There was also the great Prof. Reminitsky, the
teacher who had made Lloyd, and had come to New York
with him; and there was the Herr Prof, von Arne, of
the University of Berlin, a world-renowned psychia-
trist, author of "The Neurosis of Inspiration". The
Herr Professor had come to America to make some
studies for his forthcoming masterpiece on the religious
mania ; and he was glad to see his old friend Reminitsky,
whose seventeen-year-old musical prodigy was most in-
teresting material for study.

Prof. Reminitsky was the world's greatest authority
in the art of tearing the human soul to pieces by means
of horse-hair rubbed with resin and scraped over the in-
testines of a pig. There were no tricks of finger-gym-
nastics and of tone-production that he had not mas-
tered. As for the emotions produced thereby, he felt
them, but in a purely professional way; that is, the
convictions he had concerning them related to their ef-
fects upon audiences, and more especially upon the
score or two of critical experts whose psychology had
been his life-study. But having studied also the psy-
chology of youth, he knew that his protege must needs
have other convictions concerning his performances.
This -^as his .Supreme greatness — ^that he imderstood

LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

the paranoia of enthusiasm, and used this understand-
ing to tempt his pupils to new heights of achievement.

In all of which, of course, his friend von Ame was
a great help to him. Von Ame had dug through a
score of great libraries, and had travelled all the world
over, frequenting cafes and salons, monasteries and
prayer-cells, prisons and hospitals and asylums — wher-
ever one might get new glimpses of the extraordinarily
intricate phenomena of the aberration called "Genius".
He had several thousand cases of it at his finger-tips
— he had measured its reaction-times and calculated its
cephalic index, and analyzed its secretions and tested it
for indecan. He knew trance and clairvoyance, auto-
suggestion and telepathic hallucination, epilepsy and
hysteria and ecstasy ; and over the head of any disputa-
tious person he would swing the steam-shovel of his
erudition, and bury the unfortunate beneath a wagon-
load of Latin and Greek derivatives.

Also, there was Moses Rosen, the business-manager.
Moses was short, and wore a large diamond ring, and he
also was a specialist in the phenomena of "Genius".
He studied them from the point of view of the box-
office, and his tests were quite as definite as those of
the psychological laboratory. There came to Moses
an endless stream of prodigies, all of them having long
hair and picturesque aspects, and talking rapidly and
rolling their eyes ; the problem was to determine which
of them had the faculty of true Genius, which not only
talked rapidly and roUed its eyes, but also had the
power of causing money to flow in through a box-office
window.

In this case Moses felt that the prospects were good ;
the only trouble being that the prodigy intended to
render a concerto by a strange composer — a stormy

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 333

and unconventional thing which would annoy the critics.
Moses suggested something that was "classic"; and
agreed with Mrs. Hartman that there ought to be some-
thing corresponding to "good form" in music.

§ 3. So all these strange creatures were poking and
peering and smelling about the "Genius"; and mean-
while, there came at intervals faint strains of music
from a distant room. At last Lloyd Hartman entered ;
beautiful, pale and sensitive — a haunted boy, and the
most haunting figure that had yet come to Thyrsis'
imagination. Also, it was the hardest piece of work
he had ever undertaken ; for the character had come
to him, not as a formula or a collection of phrases,
but as an intuition, a part of his own soul; and he
would work out a scene a score of times, finding words
to phrase it, and then rejecting them. By what
speeches could he give his sense of the gulf that lay
between Lloyd and the people about him.'' For this
boy could not cope with them in argument, he would
have no mastery of the world of facts. He must be
without any touch of sophistication, of cynicism; and
yet, when he spoke to them, it must be clear that he
knew them for difi'erent beings from himself. He would
go with them meekly ; but one would feel that it was be-
cause his path lay in their direction. When the point
came that their ways parted, he would go his own way ;
and just there lay the seed of the tragi-comedy.

The family gathers about him, and he answers their
questions. He will wear the kind of tie that his sister
prefers, and they may set any date they please for the
musicales at home. He hears the "copy" which Moses
has prepared for his advertisements ; and then he sits,
absent-minded, while they talk about him. Music is in

334. LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

his thoughts, and gradually it steals into his aspect and
the gestures of his hand. They watch him, and a pall
comes over them : until at last the mother exclaims that
he makes her nervous, and leads the family off.

Then Miss Arnold is announced — Helena Arnold,
who has been recommended as accompanist at the great
concert. She is young and beautiful; and the two go
into the next room to play, while the professors remain
to talk over this new complication.

Prof, von Ame, of course, lays especial emphasis
upon the sex-element in psychopathology ; he and Remi-
nitsky have talked the subject out many years ago,
and adopted a definite course of action. The abnormali-
ties incidental to sex-repression were innumerable, and
for the most part destructive; but there could be no
question that all the more striking phenomena of the
neurosis called "Genius" were greatly increased in their
intensity by this means. So, in dealing with his pupils,
and especially with a prodigy like young Hartman,
Prof. Reminitsky would call into service all the para-
phernalia of religious mysticism ; teaching his pupil
to regard woman as the object of exalted adoration,
a being too holy to be attained to even in thought. And
now, of course, when the proposed accompanist turns
out to be a decidedly alluring young female, it is neces-
sary to take careful heed.

Meanwhile from the distance come bursts of wild
music; and at last Helena returns — pale, and deeply
agitated. "It is that concerto!" she says, and then asks
to be excused from talking. Lloyd comes, and stands
by the door watching her. When his teacher begins to
open business negotiations, he asks him abruptly to
leave them alone.

Helena asks, "Who wrote thftt music?" He tells

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 335

her a ghastly story of a titan soul who starved in a
garret and shot himself, crushed by the mockery of
the world.

"I might have saved him!" the boy exclaims. "I
was so busy with the music I forgot the man !"

They talk about this epoch-making concerto, and
how Lloyd means to force it upon the public. "And
you shall play it with me !" he exclaims. "You are the
first that has ever vmderstood it !"

"I cannot play it !" she protests ; to which he answers,
"It was like his voice come back from the grave !" And
so we see these two souls cast into the crucible together.

§ 4. The second act showed the aftermath of the
great concert, and took place in the drawiag-room of
the Hartman family's apartment, at four o'clock in
the morning. We see Moses and the two professors,
who have not been able to tear themselves away ; dis-
hevelled, distrait, wild with vexation, they pace about
and lament. Failure, utter ruin confronts them — the
structure of their hopes lies in the dust ! They blame it
all on "that woman" — and members of the family con-
cur in this. It was she who kept Lloyd to his resolve
to play that mad concerto; and then, to cast aside all
the master had taught them, all the results of weeks
of drilling — and to play it in that frantic, demonic
fashion. Now the men await the morning papers, which
will bring them the verdict of "the world"; and they
shudder with the foreknowledge of what that verdict
will be.

Lloyd and Hdena enter. They have been walking
for hours, and have not been thinking of "the world".
They listen, half -heeding, to the protests and laments ;

LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

they could not help it, they explain — the music took
hold of them.

Tlie two professors go off to get the papers, and
Moses goes into the next room to rest; after which it
becomes clear to the audience that Lloyd and Helena
are figliblng the sex-duel.

"You do not care about people," she is saying, som-
brely.

To which his reply is, "It is not to be found in
people."

"And yet from people it must come !" she insists.

He answers, "They do not even know what I mean;
and they have no humility."

"It is a problem," Lloyd continues, after a pause.
"Shall one go on alone, or wait and bring others with
him.'' — ^You have brought that problem into my life."

She answers to this, "I cannot see how my love will
hinder you."

He replies, "If you love mCy who will love my art?"

So it goes — until the professors return with their
freight of the world's Philistinism. And here came a
scene, over which Thyrsis shook for many a day with
merriment. The accounts of the concert are read;
Moses awakens and comes in ; and as the agony in-
creases, the members of the family appear, one by one,
clad in their dressing-gowns, and adding their lamenta-
tions to the chorus. Gone is all the prestige of the two
professors, gone all the profits of Moses, gone all the
visions of social triumphs in the city of the middle
West!

To all of which uproar the two listen patiently ; un-
til at last the mother, in a transport of vexation, turns
upon Helena, and accuses her of ensnaring the boy.
And then — the climax of the scene — Lloyd springs up ;

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 337

all that Genius in him, which has so far gone into music,
turns no-jT into rage and scorn. He pictures these
people — pawing over his inspiration with their unclean
hands — peering at it, weighing it, chaffering over it —
taking it into the market-place to be hawked about. He
shows them what they are, and what that "world" is,
to which they would offer his muse as a whore. And
then at the climax of his speech, as he is waving his
violin in the air, the Herr Prof, von Arne ventures to
put in a word ; and the boy whirls upon him, and brings
down the three thousand-dollar treasure upon the emi-
nent psychiatrist's head!

§ 5. The third act, which was the hardest of all
to write, was to take place in a garret. Lloyd has gone
away alone, and three years have passed, and now he
lies dying of a wasting disease. Helena has come to
him again — and still they are fighting the duel. "A
woman will do anything for a man but renounce him,"
says Lloyd; and she cannot understand this fierce in-
stinct of his.

She has come and found him ; and he lies gasping for
breath, and speaking in broken sentences. Yet he will
not have her bring grief into his chamber ; he has fought
his way through grief, and through hatred and con-
tempt, and now he lies at peace upon the bosom of
nature. No longer is he wrapped up in his own vision ;
he has learned from the million suns in the sky and
the million trees of the forest. He tells her that the
thing called "Genius" springs ceaselessly from the
heart of life.

He has cast out fear; and with it he has cast out
love. "What are you.?" he asks. "What am I?" And
he sets forth in blazing words his vision of the soul.

338 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

which is as a flash of light in a raindrop, and yet one
with the eternal process. As the fruit of his life he
leaves one symphony in manuscript, and some pages
of writing in which he has summed up his faith. That
is enough, he says — that is victory; for that he fled
away, and killed his love.

The two professors come, having learned that Lloyd
is dying. But even they cannot divert him. He tells
von Arne that his learning will submit itself, and that
scientists will be as gardeners, tending the yovmg
flowers of faith. His mother and father come, and he
whispers that even for them there is hope — that in the
deepest mire of respectability the spark of the soul still
glows. His mother bursts into weeping by his bed, and
he tells her that even from the dungeon of pride there
may be deliverance. So he sends them all away to
pray.

Then Helena sits at the piano and plays a few bars
of that sonata of Beethoven's which is an utterance of
most poignant grief, and which some publisher has
cruelly misnamed the "Moonlight". And after long
silence, the dying man communes with his muse. A
light suffuses the room, and he whispers, "Take thine
own time; for the seeds of thy glories are planted in
the hearts of men !"

§ 6. OvEK these things Thyrsis would work for six
hours at a stretch, sitting without moving a muscle;
for days and nights he would wander about at random
in the woods. He ate irregularly, of such things as
he could put his hands upon; and sleep fled from him
like a mistress spurned. When, after a couple of
months, he had finished the task, there was an incessant
throbbing in his forehead, and — alas for the sudden

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 339

tumble from the heights of Parnassus! — he had lost
almost entirely the power of digesting food.

But the play was done. He sent it off to be copied,
and wrote paeans of thanksgiving to Corydon. Once
more he had a weapon, newly-forged and sharpened,
wherewith to pierce that tough hide of the world !

There remained the practical question: What did
one do when he had a play completed.'' What was the
first step to be taken.? Thyrsis pondered the problem
for several days ; and then, as chance would have it,
his eye was caught by a newspaper paragraph to the
effect that "Ethelynda Lewis, the popular comedienne,
is to be starred in a serious drama next season, under
the management of Robertson Jones. Miss Lewis's
play has not yet been selected." Now, as it happened,
"Ethelynda Lewis" had been on the play-bill of "The
Princess of Prague", that tragic "musical comedy" to
which Thyrsis had been taken ; but he never noticed the
names of actors and actresses, and had no suspicions.
He sent his manuscript to this future star ; and a week
later came a note, written on scented monogram paper
in a tall and distinguished chirography, acknowledging
the receipt of his play and promising to read it.

Then Thyrsis turned to attack the manuscripts which
had been accumulating while he was writing. They were
coming more frequently now — apparently Mr. Ardsley
liked his work. To Corydon, who had gone to the
country with her parents, he wrote that he was getting
some money ahead, and so she might join him before
long.

This brought him a deluge of letters ; and it forced
him to another swift descent into the world of reality.
"I have told you nothing of my sufferings," wrote Cory-
don. "At least a score of times I have written you long

340 LOVE'S riLGRIMAGE

letters and then torn them up, saying that your work
must not be disturbed. But oh, Thyrsis, I do not
think I can stand it much longer! Can you imagine
what it means to be shut up in a boarding-house, with-
out one living soul to understand about me?"

She would go on to tell of her griefs and humilia-
tions, her longings and rages and despairs. Then,
too, Cedric was not growing as he should. "He is beau-
tiful," she wrote, "and every one loves him. But he
makes not the least attempt to sit up, and I am very
much worried. I fear that I ought not to go on nurs-
ing him — I am too nervous to eat as I should. And then
I think of the winter, and that we may still be sepa-
rated, and I do not see how I am to ctand it. It is as
if I were in a prison. I think of you, and I cannot
make you real to me."

To all of which Thyrsis could only reply with vague
hopes — and then go away for a tramp in the forest,
and call to his soul for new courage. He had still
troubles enough of his own. For one thing, the fiend
in his stomach was not to be exorcised by any spell he
knew. It was all very picturesque to portray one's
hero as dying of disease; but in reality it was not at
all satisfactory. Thyrsis did not die, he merely ate a
bowl of bread and milk, and then went about for several
hours, feeling as if there were a football blown up in-
side of him.

He had a touching faith in the medical profession
in those days, and whenever there was anything wrong
with him, he would turn the problem over to a doctor
and his soul would be at rest. In this case the doctor
told him that he had dyspepsia— ^not a very difficult
diagnosis — and gave him a bottle full of a red liquid
to be taken after meals. To Thyrsis this seemed an

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 841

example of the marvels of science, of the adjustment of
means to ends ; for behold, when he had taken the red
Uquid, the bread and milk disappeared as if by magic !
And he might go on and eat anything else — ^if there was
trouble, he had only to take more of the red liquid ! So
he plunged into work on a pot-boiler, and wrote Cory-
don to be of cheer, that the dawn was breaking.

§ 7. CoKYDOis, in the meantime, had received a copy
of his play; and he was surprised at the effect it had
upon her. "It is marvellous," she wrote; "it is like a
blaze of lightning from one end to the other. And
yet, much as I rejoice in its power, the main feeling it
brought me was of anguish ; for it seemed to me as if
in this play you had spoken out of your inmost soul.
Can it be that you are really chafing against the bond
of our love ? That you feel that I have hold of you and
cling to you ; and that you resent it, and shrink from
me.' Oh Thyrsis, what can I do.'' Shall I bid you go,
and blot the thought of you from my mind.^* Is that
what you truly want.'' 'A woman will do anything for
a. man- but renounce him !' Did you not shudder for
me when you wrote those words .''

"It is two o'clock in the morning, and so far I have
not been able to sleep. I have lain awake with torturing
thoughts ; and then the baby wakened up, and I had to
put him to sleep again — any indisposition of mine
always affects him. I am sitting on the floor at the foot
of the bed, writing with a candle; and hoping to get
myself sufficiently exhausted, so that I shall no longer
lie awake.

"Go and find your vision over my corpse, and may
God bless you ! . . . I wrote that hours ago, and I tried
to mean it. I try to tell myself that I will take the

84a LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

child and go away, and crush my own hopes and yearn-
ings, and give my life to him. But no — I cannot, I
cannot ! It is perfectly futile for me to think of that —
I crave for life, and I cannot give up. There is that
in me that will never yield, that will take no refusal.
Sometimes I see myself as a woman of seventy, still
seeking my life. Do you not realize that. J" I feel that
I shall never grow old !

"How strange a thing it is, Thyrsis, that you and I,
who might do so much with so little chance, should have
no chance at all. I read of other poets and their wives
— at least they managed to have a hut on some hillside,
and they did not absolutely starve.

"I am tired now; perhaps I can sleep. But I will
tell you something, Thyrsis — does it sound so very
foolish .'' Not only wiU I never grow old, but I will never
give up your love! Yes, some day you will find out
how to seek your vision in spite of the fact that I am
your wife!"

§ 8. Anothee day, there would be moods of peace,
and even of merriment ; it was always like putting one's
hand into a grab-bag, to open a new letter from Cory-
don. In after years he would read them, and strange
were the memories they brought !

"My Thyrsis," she wrote: "I have been reading a
story of Heine in ZangwiU's "Dreamers of the Ghetto".
I did not know about Heine. He loved and married a
sweet little woman of the people — Mathilde — who didn't
appreciate his writings. I am not only going to love
you, but I am going to appreciate your writings ! Some
day I am going to be educated — and won't it be fine
when I am educated?

"I keep very busy, but I have not so much time as I

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 343

had last sununer. I live almost all my life in hope — the
present is nothing. I think I eet more strength by
gazing at my baby than in any other way. I wonder
if I can ever infuse into him my inspiration and my
desire. It is wonderfully exciting to me to think of
what a free soul could do, if it possessed my spirit and
ray dreams. Ah, even you don't know ! I smile to my-
self when I think how surprised you might some day
be! Oh, my baby, my baby, surely you will not fail
me — ^little soul that is to be. This is what I say to him,
and then I squeeze him in ecstasy, and he coughs up his
milk. Dear funny little thing, that is so pleased with
a red, white and blue rattle. At present he is grinning
at it ecstatically — and he is truly most horribly cun-
ning. His favorite expression is 'Ah-boo, ah-boo' ; and
is not that just too bright.? Everybody tries to spoil
him— even a twelve-year-old boy here wanted to kiss
him. And wonder of wonders, he has two teeth appear-
ing in his lower gums ! Poor me — he bites hard enough
as he is."

And then again :

"My Beloved : I am sitting with my candle once more.
It is too hot for a lamp. I have been reading 'Paradise
Lost', and truly I am astonished that it is so beautiful.
Also I have been reading a book about Unitarianism, and
I did not know that such things had been written. But
I think it is hardly worth while to call one's self a
Unitarian. I was thinking that I will go back and read
the Bible through. I would not mind, if I knew I did
not have to believe it.

"Also; this week, I read 'Paul and Virginia'. Oh,
<Jo not write anything to me about our meeting, imtil
you are sure it can be ! It breaks my heart.

"Did it ever occur to you that we might embark

344 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

for the tropics? We'd have a hut, and I might learn to
raise fruits and vegetables. I sigh for some verdant
isle — and I am not joking. We might find some place
where steamers came now and then, and some one in
New York could attend to your manuscripts.

"To-night I was trying to put my baby to sleep and
he wouldn't go, but just lay in my lap and kicked and
grinned. I tried to coax him to go to sleep, but if I
was the least bit impatient he'd begin to cry. And
then he'd grin at me so roguishly, as if to say, 'Let's
play before I go to sleep !' Finally I looked right at
him and said, 'Now, you have played long enough, and
I wish you to be a good boy and g'o to sleep !' And
then he laughed, and I put him on his side and he went
to sleep! Wasn't that bright for a baby just seven
months old?

"I think I write you much more interesting letters
than you write me. To be sure I have no books into
which to put my thoughts. Also, I have a great deal
of time to compose letters to you ; Ccdric wakes me up
so much in the night, and often I cannot go to sleep
again. It plays havoc with me as a rule; and yet
sometimes, when I'm not too exhausted, there is a certain
joy in watching by the dim candle light the rosy up-
turned face and the little groping mouth. Oh Thyrsis,
he is all mine and yours, and we must make him glad
he was borned, mustn't we?"

§ 9. Such letters would come at a time when Thyrsia
was almost prostrated with exhaustion ; and great waves
of loneliness and yearning would sweep over him. Ah
God, what a fate it was — to labor as he labored, and
then to have no means of recreation or respite, no hand

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 345

to smooth his forehead, no voice to whisper solace!
Who could know the tragedy of that aspect of his life?

There came one day an incident that almost broke
his heart. Down the lake came a private yacht, beauti-
ful and swift, clean as a new penny, its bronze and white
paint ghstening in the sunlight. It anchored not far
out from the point where Thyrsis camped, and a boat
put off, and from it three young girls stepped ashore.
They were slender and graceful, clad all in white — as
spotless as the vessel itself, and glowing with health
and joyfulness. They cast shy glances at the tent, and
asked Thyrsis to direct them to the nearest farm-house ;
he watched them disappear through the woods, and saw
them return with a basket of fruit.

It was just at sunset, and there was a new moon in
the sky, and the evening star trembled upon the bosom
of the waters. There in the magic stillness lay the
vessel — and suddenly came the sounds of a guitar, and
of young voices singing. Wonderful to tell, they sang
— not "ragtime" and "college songs," but the chorus
of the "Rheintochter," and Schubert's "Auf dem Was-
ser zu singen", and other music, unknown to Thyrsis,
exquisite almost beyond enduring. It pierced him to
the heart; he sat with his hands clenched, and every
nerve of him a-quiver, and the hot tears raining down
his cheeks. It was loveliness not of this earth, it was an
apparition ; that presence which had been haunting him
ever since he had come to this spot —

"So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

The music died away, and rose again ; and the deeps

34.6 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

of his spirit were opened, and ecstasy and grief welled
up together within him. Then he made out that the
anchor was being lifted ; and he was tempted to spring
up and cry out to them to stay. But no — ^what did
they know of him? What would they care about him?
So he crouched by the bank, drinking greedily the
precious notes ; and as the yacht with its gleaming
lights stole away into the twilight, all the poet's soul
went yearning with it. Still he could hear the faint
strains swelling —

"Blow, blow, breathe and blow.
Wind of the western sea!"

He sat with his face hidden in his hands, shuddering.
Here he was, wrestling in the pit with sickness and
despair — and there above him were the heights of art.
If only he could live with such music, what prodigies
could he not perform. And they who possessed it —
did it mean to them what it meant to him? They who
had everything that life could offer — music and art,
freedom and beauty and health — all the treasures of
life as their birthright — had they never a thought of
those who had nothing, and were set to slave in the gal-
leys of their pleasure-craft?

Thyrsis was always coming upon some aspect of this
thing called Privilege. Corydon had suggested that
there might be some work that she could do at home;
and so one day he was looking over the advertisements
in a newspaper, and came upon a composition by a man
who was seeking a governess for his three children.
It was written in a style all its own ; it revealed a person
accustomed to specify exactly what he wanted, and it
occupied three or four inches, as if symbolic of the fact

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 347

that he did not consider expense. He described the life
of his children; they had servants and a tutor to at-
tend to their physical and mental needs, and the father
now sought a friend and companion, to take charge
of their spiritual and social development. The specifi-
cations evoked a picture of an establishment, in which
all the community's resources, all the sciences and arts
of civilization, were set at work to create joy and power
for three young people. What a contrast it made with
the care that little Cedric was getting, as revealed in
his mother's letters!

Thyrsis could see in his mind's eye the master and
provider of this establishment. How well he knew the
type — how often had he sat in some quiet corner and
listened while it revealed itself. A man alert and ag-
gressive; immaculate in appearance as the latest
fashion-plate, and overlaid with a veneer of culture —
yet underneath it still the predatory talons, the soul
of the hawk. He was a "practical" man; that is, he
understood profit. He was trained to see where profit
lay, and swift to seize upon it. As a business-man he
ruled labor, and crushed his competitors, and directed
legislatures and political machines ; as a lawyer he pro-
tected his kind from attack, as a judge he bent the law
to the ends of greed. So he lived in palaces, and
travelled about in private-cars and yachts, and had ser-
vants and governesses for his children, and valets and
secretaries to attend himself. And whenever by any
chance he got a glimpse of Thyrsis' soul, how he hated
it! On the other hand, to Thyrsis he was a portent
of terror. He ruled in every field of human activity;
and yet one saw that if his rule continued, it would
mean the destruction of civilization ! Whenever Thyrsis
met one of these men, whether in imagination or reality,

848 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

he found himself with hands clenched, and every nerve
of him a-tingle with the lust of combat.

§ 10. A MOST trying thing it was to a man who
carried the burden of the future in his soul — ^to have to
wrestle with an obstinate stomach ! But so it was
again; the magic red liquid seemed to be losing its
power. Then, the pot-boiler was not going well ; and to
cap the climax, the manuscripts stopped coming. Thyr-
sis, after waiting two or three weeks in suspense and
dread, wrote to Mr. Ardsley, and received a reply to the
eflFect that he would not be able to send any more. Mr.
Ardsley had sent them because of his interest in the
proposed "practical" novel; and now he had learned
that the poet had been giving his time to the writing of
an impossible play!

Thyrsis' predicament was a desperate one, and
drove him to a desperate course. It was now midsum-
mer ; and run down from overwork as he was, could he
face the thought of returning to the sweltering city,
to go to work in some office.'' Or was he to hire out as
a farm-laborer, imder he knew not what conditions?
He recoiled from either of these alternatives ; and then
suddenly, as he racked his brains, a wild idea flashed
over him. For years he had talked and dreamed of es-
caping from civilization. He had pictured himself
upon some tropic island, where bananas and cocoanuts
grew; or again in some Northern wilderness, where he
might hunt and fish, and live like the pioneers. And
now — why not do it.-" He had an axe and a rifle and
a fishing-rod; and only a few days previously he had
heard a man telling of a lake in tiie Adirondacks, where
not a dozen people went in the course of a year.

It was early one morning the idea came to him ; and

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 34-9

within an hour he had struck his tent and packed his
trunk. He stowed his camp-stuff and bedding in a dry-
goods box, and leaving his tent with the farmer, he
purchased a ticket to a place on the edge of the wilder-
ness. He put up at a village-hotel, a^d the next day
drove fifteen miles by a stage, and five more by a wagon,
and spent the night at a lumber-camp far in the wilder-
ness. The next day, carrying a^ much of his belong-
ings as he could,. he walked three miles more, and came
to the tiny lake that was his goal.

It was perhaps half a mile long; the virgin forest
hung about it like a great green curtain, and the
shadows of the blue momitains seemed as if painted upon
its surface. Thyrsis gave a gasp of delight as he
pushed through the bushes and saw it ; he stripped and
plunged into the crystal water — and hot and tired and
soul-sick as he was, the coolness of it was like a clasp
of protecting arms. There was a rock rising from the
centre, and he swam out and stood upon it, and gazed
about him at all the ravishing beauty, and laughed
and whooped so that the mountains rang with the
echoes.

He found an abandoned "open-camp", or shed, the
roof of which he made water-proof with newspapers
and balsam-boughs. He cut fresh boughs for his bed,
and spread his blankets upon them, and went back to
the lumber-shanties, and purchased a box of prunes and
a bag of rice. There were huckleberries in profusion
upon the hills, and in the lakes were fish, and in the
forests squirrels and rabbits, partridges and deer.
There were the game-laws, to be sure; but there was
also a "higher law", as eminent authorities had de-
clared. As one of the wits at the lumber-camp put

350 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

It, "If any wild rabbit comes rushing' out to bite you,
don't you hesitate to defend yourself !"

So, with the sum of one dollar and twenty-three cents
in his pocket-book, Thyrsis began the happiest experi-
ence of his life. He watched the sun rise and set behind
the mountains ; and sometimes he climbed to the summits
to see it further upon its way. He watched the progress
of the tempests across the lake, and swam in the water
while the rain splashed his face and the lightning splin-
tered the pines in the forest. He crouched in the bushes
and saw the wild ducks feeding, and the deer that came
at sunset to drink. He watched the loons diving, and
spying him out with their wild eyes — sometimes, as they
rose in flight, beating the surface of the water with a
sound like thunder. At night he heard their loud
laughter, and the creaking cries of the herons flying
past. Sometimes far up in the hills a she-fox would
bark, or some too-aged tree of the forest would come
down with a booming crash. Thyrsis would lie in his
open camp and watch the moonlight through the pines,
and prayers of thankfulness would well up within
him —

"Peace of the forest, rich, profound.
Gather me closely, fold me round!"

There had been much carrying and hard work to do
before he was settled, and there was more of it all
through his stay. He had to cook all his meals and
clean up afterwards ; and because the nights were cold
and his blankets few, there was much firewood to be
cut. Also, there was no food unless he went out and
found it, and so he spent hours each day tramping
about in the forests. By the time he had got home and

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 351

had cleaned the game and cooked it, he was ravenously
hungry, and there was never any question as to what
would digest. This was just what he had sought ; and
so now, deliberately, he banned all the muses from his
presence, and poured the rest of the dyspepsia-medicine
into- the lake. His muscles became hard, and the flush
of health returned to his cheeks, and as he went about
his tasks he laughed and sang, and shouted his defiance
to the world. And to Corydon he wrote his newest plan
— to earn a little in the city that winter, and come back
in the early spring and build a log-cabin for herself
and the baby!

§ 11. Twice a week his mail came to the lumber-
camp, in care of the friendly foreman. Each time that
he went out to get it, he hoped for some new turn.
There was a publisher interested in "The Hearer of
Truth.", and an editor, was reading "The Higher
Cannibalism" ; also, and most important of all, Miss
Ethelynda Lewis had now had "The Genius" for nearly
two months, and had not yet reported. Thyrsis wrote
to remind her, and after another two weeks, he wrote
yet more urgently. At last came a note — "I have been
away from the city, and have not had a chance to read
the play. I will attend to it at once." And then, after
three weeks more, Thyrsis wrote again — and at last
came a letter that made his heart leap.

"I have read your play", wrote the popular come-
dienne. "I am very much interested in it indeed. I
have asked my manager to read it, and will write you
again shortly."

Thyrsis sent this to Corydon, and again there was
rejoicing and expectation. "If only I can get the play
on," he wrote, "our future is safe, for the profits from

352 LOVE'S PILGRI:MAGE

plays are enormous. It will be a great piece of luck
if I have found the right person at the first attempt."

More weeks passed. Thyrsis watched the pageant
of autumn upon the mountains — ^he saw the curtains
of the lake-shore change to gold and scarlet, and from
that to pale yellow and brown; and now, with every
lightest breeze that stirred, there were showers of leaves
came fluttering to the ground. The deer left the lake-
shore and took to the "hard-wood", and the drumming
of partridges thundered at sunset. The nights were
bitterly cold, and he spent a good part of his day
chopping logs and carrying them to camp, so that he
might keep a blazing fire all night. There were hunt-
ing-parties in the woods, and he got a deer, and sold
part of it, and had the rest hanging near his camp.

And then one night came the first snow-storm ; in the
morning it lay white and sparkling in the simlight —
and oh, the wonder of a hunting-trip, when the floor of
the wilderness was like a page on which could be read
the tale of all that happened in the night! One could
hardly believe that so many creatures were in these
woods — there were tracks everywhere one looked. Here
a squirrel had run, and here a partridge ; here had been
a porcupine, with feet like a baby's, and here a fox, and
here a bear with two cubs. And in yon hollow a deer
had slept through the night, and here he had blown
away the snow from the moss ; here two bucks had
fought; and here one of them had been started by a
himter, and had bounded away with leaps that it was a
marvel to measure.

Thyrsis nearly lost his life at these fascinating ad-
ventures ; for another storm came up, and covered his
tracks, and when he tried to find his way back by the
compass, he found that he had forgotten which end of

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 353

the needle pointed to the North! So he wandered
about for hours ; and in the end had to decide by the
toss of a penny whether he should get out to the main
road, or wander off into twenty miles of trackless wilder-
ness, without either food or matches. Fortunately the
penny fell right; and he spent the night at a farm-
house, and the next day got back to the lumber-camp.

And there was a letter from Ethelynda Lewis ! Thyr-
sis tore it open and read this incredible message:

"Your play has been carefully considered, and I am
disposed to accept it. It is certainly very unusual and
interesting, and I think it can be made a success. There
are, however, certain changes which ought to be made.
I am wondering if you wiU come to the city, so that we
can talk it over. It would not be possible to settle a
matter so important by mail; and there is no time to
be lost, for I am ready to go ahead with the work at
once, and so is my manager."

§ 12. Nothing that the mail had ever brought to
Thyrsis had meant so much to him as this. He was
transported with deHght. Yes, for this he would go
back to the city! — But then, he caught his breath,
realizing his plight. How was he to get to the city,
when he had only three dollars to his name?

He turned the problem over in his mind. Should he
send a telegram to some relative and beg for help ? No,
he had vowed to die first. Should he write to the actress,
and explain.? No, for that would kill his chances.
There was just one way to be thought -of; venison in
the woods was worth eleven cents a pound, and the
smallest of deer would get him to the city !

And so began a great adventure. Thyrsis wrote
Miss Ethelynda that he would come ; and that night he

S54 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

loaded up some more buckshot "shells", and before
dawn of the next day was out upon the hunt. The
snow was gone now ; and with soft shoes on his feet he
wandered all day through the wilderness — and was re-
warded by two chances to shoot at the white tails of
flying deer.

And then came night, and he rigged up a "jack",
a forbidden apparatus made of a soap-box and a lantern
and a tin-plate for a reflector. He had an ingenious
arrangement of straps and cords, whereby he could
fasten this upon his head; and he had found an old
lumber-trail where the deer came to feed upon the soft
grass. Down this he crept like a thief in the night,
with the light gleaming ahead, and the deer tramping
in the thickets and whistling their alarms. Now and
then one would stand and stare, his eye-balls gleaming
like coals of fire ; and at last came the roar of the gun,
and the jacklight tumbled to the ground. When Thyr-
sis lighted up again and went to examine, there were
spots of blood upon the leaves — but no deer.

So the next day he was up again at dawn, watching
by one of the runways to the lake. And then came an-
other tramp, through the thickets and over the moun-
tains— and more shots at the "flags" of the elusive
enemy. Thyrsis' back ached, and his feet were as if
weighted with lead, but still he plodded on and on — it
was his life against a deer's.

If only he had had a boat, so that he could have
set up his "jack" in that! But he had no boat — and
so he wrapped himself in blankets and sat to watch
another runway at sunset; and when no deer came he
decided to stay on until the moon rose. It was a bitterly
cold night, and his hands almost froze to the gun-barrel

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 355

when he touched it. And the moon rose, and forthwith
went behind a cloud — and then came a deer !

There was hardly a trace of motion in the air, but
somehow the creature half -scented Thyrsis; and so it
stood and trumpeted to the night. Oh, the wildness of
that sound — and the thumping of the heart of the
hunter, and the breathless suspense, and the burning
desire. The deer would take a step, and a twig would
crack ; and then it would stand still again, and Thyrsis
would listen, crouching like a statue, clutching his
weapon and striving to penetrate the darkness. And
then the deer would take two or three more steps, and
stand again ; and then, in sudden alarm, bound away ;
and then come back again, step by step — fascinated
by this mysterious thing there in the darkness. For
three mortal hours that creature pranced and cavorted
about Thyrsis, while he waited with chattering teeth;
then in the end it took a sudden fright, and went bound-
ing away through the thicket.

So came another day's hunting; and at sundown an-
other watch by a runway; and another deer, that ap-
proached from the wrong direction, and came upon a
man, worn out by three days and nights of eifort, lying
sound asleep at his post!

But there could be only one ending to this adventure.
Thyrsis was out for a deer, and he would never quit
until he got one. All his planning and wandering had
availed him nothing; but now, the next morning, as
he stepped out from his camp with a bucket in his
hand — behold, at the edge of a thicket, a deer ! Thyrsis
stood rooted to the spot, staring blankly ; and the deer
stood staring at him.

It was a time of agony. Should he try to creep back
to his gun, or should he make a sudden dash? He started

856 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

to try the latter, and had a pang of despair as the deer
whirled and bolted away. He leaped to the camp and
grabbed his gun and sprang out into sight again —
and there, off to the right, was another deer. It was
a huge buck, with wide-spreading antlers, rising out of
the bushes where it stood. It saw Thyrsis, and started
away; and in a flash he raised his gun and fired. He
saw the deer stumble, and he fired the other barrel;
and then he started in wild pursuit.

He had been warned to beware of a wounded deer ; but
he forgot that — ^he forgot also that he had no more
shells upon him. He ran madly through the forest,
springing over fallen logs, plunging through thickets
— he would have seized hold of the animal with his bare
hands, if only he could have caught up with it.

The deer was badly hurt. It would leap ahead, and
then stumble, half falling, and then leap again. Even
in this way, the distance it covered was amazing ; Thyr-
sis was appalled at the power of the creature, its tre-
mendous bounds, the shock of its fall, and the crashing
of the underbrush before it. It seemed like a huge
boulder, leaping down a precipice ; and Thyrsis stood
at a safe distance and watched it. According to the
poetry-books he should have been ashamed — perhaps
moved to tears by the reproachful look in the great
creature's eyes. But assuredly the makers of the
poetry-books had never needed the price of a railroad-
ticket as badly as Thyrsis did!

He only realized that night how desperate his need
had been. He lay in his berth on board a train for the
city — while back at his "open-camp" a wild blizzard
was raging, and the thermometer stood at forty degrees
below zero. But Thyrsis was warm and comfortable;
and also he was brown and rugged, once more full

THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH 357

of health and eagerness for life. All night he listened
to the pounding of the flying train; and fast as the
music of it went, it was not fast enough for his imagina-
tion. It seemed as if the rails were speaking —
saying to him, over and over and over again, "Ethelynda
Lewis! Ethelynda Lewis! Ethelynda Lewis!"

Book X
THE END OF THE TETHER

They sat still watching upon the hiUrtop, drvnking
in the scent of the clover.

"Ah, if only we might have come hack here!" she
sighed. "If only we had never had to leave!"

"That way lies unhappiness," he said.

"Perhaps," she answered; and then quoted

'Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour

In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill!
Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?"

"I wonder," said he, "if the poet put as much into
these stanzas as we find in them!"

§ 1. Theotigh the summer Corydon had been living
week by week upon the hope that her husband would be
able to send for her ; all through the fall she had been
dreaming of the arrangements they would make for the
winter. But by now it had become clear that they would
have to be separated for a part of the winter as well.
She had sent him long letters, full of hopes and yearn-
ings, anxieties and rebellions; but in the end she had
brought lierself to face the inevitable. And then it
transpired that even a greater sacrifice was required
of her — she was to be forbidden to see Thyrsis at all!
If a man did not support his wife, said the world, it
was common-sense that he should not have any wife;
that was the quickest way to bring him to his senses.
And so the two had threshed out that problem, and
chosen their course ; they would live in the same city, and
yet confine themselves to writing letters !

A curious feeling it gave Thyrsis, to know that she
was so near to him, and yet not to be going to meet
her! He could not endure any part of the city where
he had been with her, and got himself a haU bedroom on
the edge of a tenement-district far up town. Then he
had his shoes shined, and purchased a clean collar, and
wrote Miss Ethelynda Lewis that he was ready to call.
While he was waiting to hear from her, there came to
him a strange adventure ; assuredly one of the strangest
that ever befell a struggling poet, in a world where
many strange adventures have befallen struggling
poets.

For six months Thyrsis had not seen his baby; and
361

362 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

there had come in the meantime so many letters, telling
so many miraculous things about that baby ! So many
dreams he had dreamed about it, so many hopes and so
many prayers were centered in it! Twenty-two hours
had he sat by the bedside when it was born ; and through
all the trials that had come afterwards, how he had
suffered and wept for it! Now his heart was wrung
with longing to see it, to touch it — ^his child. He
wrote Corydon that he could not stand it ; and Corydon
wrote back that he was right — ^he should surely see the
baby. And so it was arranged between them that
Thyrsis was to be at a certain place in the park, and
she would send the nurse-girl there with little Cedric.

He went and sat upon a bench; and the hour came,
and at last down the path strolled a nurse-girl, wheel-
ing a baby-carriage. He looked at the girl — ^yes, she
was Irish, as Corydon had said, and answered all specifi-
cations ; and then he looked at the baby, and his heart
sank into his boots. Oh, such a baby ! With red hair
and a pug-nose, plebeian and dull-looking — such a baby !
Thyrsis stared at the maid again — and she smiled at
him. Then she passed on, and he sank down upon a
bench. Great God, could it be that that was his child?
That he would have to go through life with something
so ugly, so alien to him? A terror seized him. It
was like a nightmare. He was hardly able to move.

But then he told himself it could not be! Corydon
had written him all about the baby; it was beautiful,
with a noble head ; everyone loved it. But then, were
not mothers notoriously blind? Had there ever been
a mother dissatisfied with her child? Or a father
either, for that matter? Was it not a kind of treason
for him to be so disgusted with this one — since it so
clearly must be his?

THE END OF THE TETHER

There was none other in sight ; and though he waited
half an hour, none came. At last he could stand it
no more, but hurried away to the nearest telegraph-
office. "Has baby red hair.?" he wrote. "Did he come
to the park?" And then he went to his room and
waited, and soon after came the reply : "Baby has
golden hair. Nurse was ill. Could not come."

Thyrsis read this, and then shut the door upon the
messenger-boy, and burst into wild, hilarious laughter.
He stood there with his arms stretched out, invoking
all posterity to witness — "What do you think of that?
What do you think of that?"

And a full hour later he was sitting by his bedside,
his chin supported on his hands, and still invoking
posterity. "Will you ever know what I went through?"
he was saying. "Will you ever realize what my books
have cost?" Then he smiled grimly, thinking of Vol-
taire's cruel epigram — that "letters addressed to pos-
terity seldom reach their destination !"

§ 2. Thyksis received a reply to his note, and went
to call upon Miss Ethelynda Lewis. Miss Lewis dwelt
in a luxurious apartment-house on Riverside Drive,
where a colored maid showed him into a big parlor, full
of spindle-legged gilt furniture upholstered in flowered
silk. Also the room contained an ebony grand piano,
and a bookcase, in which he had time to notice the works
of Maupassant and Marie Corelli.

Then Miss Lewis entered, clad in a morning-gown
of crimson "liberty". She was petite and exquisite,
full of alluring dimples — and apparently just out of a
perfumed bath. Thyrsis sat on the edge of his chair
and gazed at her, feeling quite out of his element.

She placed herself on the flowered silk sofa and

S64 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

talked. "I am immensely interested in that play,"
she said. "It is quite unique. And you are so young,
too — why, you seem just a boy. Really, you know, I
think you must be a genius yourself."

Thyrsis murmured something, feeling uncomfortable.

"The only thing is," Miss Lewis went on, "it will need
a lot of revision to make it practical."

"In what part.'" he asked.

"The love-story, principally," said the other. "You
see, in that respect, you have simply thrown your
chances away."

"I don't understand," said he.

*'You have made your hero act so queerly. Everyone
feels that he is in love with Helena — you meant him to
be, didn't you.? And yet he goes away from her and
won't see her! Everyone will be disappointed at that
— it's impossible, from every point of view. You'll
have to have them married in the last act."

Thyrsis gasped for breath.

"You see," continued Miss Lewis, "I am to play the
part of Helena, and I am to be the star. And obvi-
ously, it would never do for me to be rejected, and left
all up in the air like that. I must have some sort of a
love-scene."

"But" — protested the poet — "what you want me to
change is what my play is about!"

"How do you mean ?" asked the other.

"Why, it's a new kind of love," he stammered — "a
different kind."

"But, people don't understand that kind of love."

"But, Miss Lewis, that's why I wrote my play! I
want to make them understand."

"But you can't do anything like that on the stage,"
said Miss Lewis. "The public won't come to see your

THE END OF THE TETHER 365

play." And then she went on to explain to him the
conditions of success in the business of the theatre.

Thyrsis listened, with a clutch as of ice about his
heart. "I am very sorry, Miss Lewis," he said, at last
— "but I couldn't possibly do what you ask."

"Couldn't do it !" cried the other, amazed.

"It would not fit into my idea at all."

"But, don't you want to get your play produced?"

"That's just it, I want to get my play produced. If
I did what you want me to, it wouldn't be my play.
It would be somebody else's play."

And there he stood. The actress argued with him
and protested. She showed him what a great chance he
had here — one that came to a new and unknown writer
but once in a lifetime. Here was a manager ready to
give him a good contract, and to put his play on at
once in a Broadway theatre ; and here was a public
favorite anxious to have the leading role. It would be
everything he could ask — it would be fame and fortune
at one stroke. But Thyrsis only shook his head — he
could not do it. He was almost sick with disappoint-
ment ; but it was a situation in which there was no use
trying to compromise — he simply could not make a
"love-story" out of "The Genius".

So at last there came a silence between them — there
being nothing more for Miss Lewis to say.

"Then I suppose you won't want the play," said
Thyrsis, faintly.

"I don't know," she answered, with vexation. "I'll
have to think about it again, and talk to my manager.
I had not counted on such a possibility as this."

And so they left it, and Thyrsis went away. The
next morning he received a letter from "Robertson
Jones, Inc.", asking him to call at once.

366 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

§ 3. RoBEETSON Jones, the great "theatrical pro-
ducer", was large and ponderous, florid of face and firm
in manner — the steam-roller type of business-man. And
it became evident at once that he had invited Thyrsis
to come and be rolled.

"Miss Lewis tells me you can't agree about the play,"
said he.

"No," said Thyrsis, faintly.

And then Mr. Jones began. He told Thyrsis what
he meant to do with this play. Miss Lewis was one of
the country's future "stars", and he was willing to
back her without stint. He had permitted her to make
her own choice of a role, and she should have her way
in everything. There were famous playwrights bidding
for a chance to write for her ; but she had seen fit to
choose "The Genius".

"Personally," said Mr. Jones, "I don't believe in the
play. I would never think of producing it — it's not
the sort of thing anybody is interested in. But Miss
Lewis likes it; she's been reading Ibsen, and she wants
to do a 'drama of ideas', and all that sort of thing,
you know. And that's all right — she's the sort to make
a success of whatever she does. But you must do your
share, and give her a part she can make something out
of — some chance to show her charm. Otherwise, of
course, the thing's impossible."

Mr. Jones paused. "I'm very sorry" — began Thyr-
sis, weakly.

"What's your idea in refusing.'"' interrupted the
other. ,

Thyrsis tried to explain — that he had written the
play to set forth a certain thesis, and that he was
asked to make changes that directly contradicted this
thesis.

THE END OF THE TETHER S67

"Have you ever had a play produced?" demanded
the manager abruptly.

"No," said Thyrsis.

"Have you written any other plays?"

"No."

"Your first trial! Well, don't you think it a good
deal to expect that your play should be perfect?"

"I don't think"— began Thyrsis.

"Can't you see," persisted the other, "that people
who have been in this business all their lives, and have
watched thousands of plays succeed and fail, might be
able to give you some points on the matter?" — ^And
then Mr. Jones went on to set forth to Thyrsis the
laws of the theatrical game — a game in which there
was the keenest competition, and in which the "ante"
was enormously high. To produce "The Genius" would
cost ten thousand dollars at the least; and were those
who staked this to have no say whatever in the shaping
of the play? Manifestly this was absurd; and as the
manager pressed home the argument, Thyrsis felt as
if he wanted to get up and run ! When Mr. Jones
talked to you, he looked you squarely in the eye, and
you had a feeling of presumption, even of guilt, in
standing out against him. Thyrsis shrunk in terror
from that type of personality — he would let it have
anything in the world it wanted, so only it would not
clash with him. But never before had it demanded one
of the children of his dreams !

Mr. Jones went on to tell how many things he would
do for the play. It would go into rehearsal at once,
and would be seen on Broadway by the first of Feb-
ruary. They would pay him four, six and eight per
cent., and his profits could not be less than three hun-
dred dollars a week. With Ethelynda Lewis in the

368 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

leading role the play might well run until June — and
there would be the road profits the next season, in addi-
tion.

Thyrsis' brain reeled as he listened to this ; it was in
all respects identical with another famous temptation
— "The devil taketh him upon a high mountain, and
showeth him all the kingdoms of the earth!"

"And then there is England" — the man was saying.

"No, no!" cried Thyrsis, wildly. "No!"

"But why not?" demanded the other.

"It's impossible! I couldn't do it!"

"You mean you couldn't do the writing?"

"I wouldn't know how to !"

"Well then, that's easily arranged. Let me get some
one to collaborate with you. There's Richard Haber-
ton — you know who he is ?"

"No," said Thyrsis, faintly.

"He's the author of 'The Rajah's Diamond'— it's
playing with five companions now, and its third season.
And he dramatized 'In Honor's Cause' — ^you've seen
that, no doubt. We have paid him some sixty thousand
dollars in royalties so far. And he'll take the play and
fix it over — ^you wouldn't have to stir a finger."

Thyrsis sprang up in his agitation. "Please don't
ask me, Mr. Jones," he cried. "I simply cotdd not do
it!"

It seemed strange to Thyrsis, when he thought it
over afterwards, that the great Robertson Jones should
have taken the trouble to argue so long with the un-
known author of a play in which he did not believe.
Was it that opposition incited him to persist? Or had
he told Ethelynda Lewis he would get her what she
wanted, and was now reluctant to confess defeat? At
any rate, so it was — he went on to drive Thyrsis into

THE END OF THE TETHER 369

a corner, to tear open his very soul. Also, he mani-
fested anger; it was a deliberate affront that the boy
should stand out like this. And Thyrsis, in great dis-
tress of soul, explained that he did not mean it that
way — he apologized abjectly for his obstinacy. It was
the ideas that he had tried to put into his play, and
that he could not give up !

"But," persisted the manager — "write other plays,
and put your ideas into them. If you've once had a
Broadway success, then you can write anything you
please, and you can make your own terms for pro-
duction."

That thought had already occurred to Thyrsis; it
was the one that nearly broke down his resistance. He
would probably have surrendered, had the play not
been so fresh from his mind, and so dear to him ; if he
had had time enough to become dissatisfied with it, as
he had with his first novel — or discouraged about its
prospects, as he had with "The Hearer of Truth" !
But this child of his fancy was not yet weaned ; and to
tear it from his breast, and hand it to the butcher —
no, it could not be thought of!

§ 4. So he parted from Mr. Jones, and went home,
to pass two of the most miserable days of his life.
He had pronounced his "Apage, Satanas!" — ^he had
turned his back upon the kingdoms of the earth. And
so presumably — virtue being its own reward — he should
have been in a state of utter bliss. But Thyrsis had
gone deeper into that problem, and asked himself a
revolutionary question: Why should it always be that
Satan had the kingdoms of the earth at his bestowal?
Thyrsis did not want any kingdoms — he only wanted
a chance to live in the country with his wife and child.

370 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

And why, in order to get these things, must a poet
submit himself to Satan?

Then came the third morning after his interview;
and Thyrsis found in his mail another letter from
Robertson Jones, Inc. It was a letter brief and to the
point, and it struck him like a thunderbolt.

"Miss Ethelynda Lewis has decided that she wishes
to accept your play as it stands. I enclose herewith
a contract in duplicate, and if the terms are acceptable
to you, will you kindly return one copy signed, and re-
tain the other yourself."

Thyrsis read, not long after that, of a young play-
wright who died of heart-failure ; and he was not sur-
prised— if all playwrights had to go through experi-
ences such as that. He could hardly believe his eyes,
and he read the letter over two or three times; he read
the contract, with Mr. Jones' impressive signature at
the bottom. He did not know anything about theatrical
contracts, but this one seemed fair to him. It provided
for a royalty upon the gross receipts, to be paid after
the play had earned the expenses of its production.
Thyrsis had hoped that he might get some cash in ad-
vance, but that was not mentioned. In the flush of
his delight he concluded that he would not take the
risk of demanding anything additional, but signed the
contract and mailed it, and sent a telegram to acquaint
Corydon with the glorious tidings.

§ 5. One of the consequences of this triumph was
that Thyrsis purchased a new necktie and half a dozen
collars ; and another was that an angry world was in
some part appeased, and permitted the struggling poet
to see his wife and child once more.

They met in the park ; and strange it was to him to

THE END OF THE TETHER 371

see Corjdon after six months' absence. She was beauti-
ful as ever, somewhat paler, though stiU with the halo
of motherhood about her. He could scarcely realize
that she was his ; she seemed like a dream to him — ^like
some phantom of music, thrilling and wonderful, yet
fraU and unsubstantial. She clung to his arm, trem-
bling with delight, and pouring out her longing and
her grief. There came to them one of those golden
hours, when the deeps of their souls welled up, and they
pledged themselves anew to their faith.

Even stranger it was to see the child; to be able to
look at him aU he pleased, and to speak to him, and to
hold him in his arms ! He was as beautiful as Thyrsis
could have wished, and the father had no trouble at all
in being interested in him ; his smiles were things to
make the angels jealous. Thyrsis would push his car-
riage out into the park, and they would sit upon a bench
and gaze at him — each making sure that the other had
missed none of his fine points.

He was beginning to make sounds now, and had
achieved the word "puss-ee". This originally had sig-
nified the woolly kitten he carried with- him, but now
by a metonymy it had come to include all kinds of
living things ; and great was the delight of the parents
when a big red automobile flashed past, and the baby
pointed his finger, exclaiming gleefully, "Puss-ee!" It
is an astonishing thing, how little it takes to make
parents happy ; regarded purely as an abstract propo-
sition, it would be diflScult to explain why two people
who possessed between them a total of sixty-four teeth,
more or less, should have been so much excited by the
discovery that the baby had four.

But parenthood, as Thyrsis found, meant more than
charming baby-prattle and the counting of teeth. Little

372 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Cedric's tiny fingers were twisted in his heart-strings
— he loved him with a love the intensity of which fright-
ened him when he realized it. And sometimes things
went wrong, and then with a pang as from the stab
of a knife would come the thought that he might some
day lose this child. So much pain and toil a child
cost, so much it took of one's strength and power ;
and then, such a fragile thing it was — exposed to so
many perils and uncertainties, to the ravages of so
many diseases, that struck like a cruel enemy in the
dark! Corydon and Thyrsis were so ignorant — ^they
were like children themselves ; and where should they
turn for knowledge.'' There were doctors, of course;
but this took so much money — and even with all the
doctors, see how many babies died!

Thyrsis was learning the bitter truth of Bacon's
saying about "giving hostages to fortune." And
dearly as he loved the child, the artist in him cried out
against these ties. Where now was that care-free out-
look, that recklessness, that joy in life as a spectacle,
which made up so much of the artist's attitude? When
one had a wife and child one no longer enjoyed tragedies
— one lived, them ; and one got from them, not katharsis,
but exhaustion. One became timid and cautious and
didactic, and. other inartistic things. One learned that
life was real, life was earnest, and the grave was not
its goal!

Cedric had been weaned ; but still he was not growing
properly. Could it be that there was something wrong
with what they fed him .'' Corydon would come upon ad-
vertisements telling of wonderful newly-discovered foods
for infants, and giving pictures of the rosy and stal-
wart ones who were fed upon these foods. She would
take to buying them — and they were not cheap foods

THE END OF THE TETHER 373

either. Then, during the winter, the child caught cold ;
and they took that to mean that it had been in some
way exposed — that was what everybody said, and what
the name "cold" itself suggested. So Corydon would
add more flannel dresses and blankets, until the unfor-
tunate mite of life would be in a purple stew. And still,
apparently, these mysterious "colds" were not to be
thwarted. Thyrsis felt that in all this there must be
something radically wrong, and yet he knew not what
to do. Surely it should not have been such a task to
keep life in one human infant.

Then, too, the training of the baby was going badly.
He lived in close contact with nervous people who were
disturbed if he cried ; and so Corydon's energies were
given to a terrified effort to keep him from crying. He
must be dandled and rocked to sleep, he must be played
with and amused, and have everything he cried for ;
and it was amazing how early in life this little creature
learned the hold which he had upon his mother. His
chief want had come to be to sleep all day and lie awake
half the night ; and during these hours of wakefulness
he pursued the delightful pastime of holding some
one's hand and playing with it. Corydon, nervous and
sick and wrestling with melancholia, would have to lie
awake for uncounted hours and submit to this torment.
The infant had invented a name for the diversion ; he
called it "Hoodaloo mungie" — which being translated
signified "Hold your finger"- To the mother this was
like the pass-word of some secret order of demons, who
preyed upon and racked her in the night ; so that never
after in her life could she hear the phrase, even in jest,
without experiencing a nervous shock.

§ 6. This was a period of great hopefulness for

374 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Thyrsis, but also of desperate struggle. For until
the production of his play in January, he had somehow
to keep alive, and that meant more hack-work. Also
he had to lay something by, for after the rehearsals the
play would go on the road for a couple of weeks, to be
"tried on the dog" ; and during that period he must
have money enough to travel, and stay at hotels, and
also to take Corydon with him, if possible.

The rehearsals began an interesting experience for
him ; he was introduced into a new and strange world.
Thyrsis himself was shy, and disposed to run away
and hide his emotions ; but here were people — the actor-
folk — whose business it was to live them in sight of the
world. And these emotions were their life ; they were
very intense, yet quick both to come and to go. Such
people were intensely personal ; they were like great
children, vain and sensitive, their moods and excitements
not to be taken too seriously. But it was long before
Thyrsis came to realize this, and meanwhile he had
some uncomfortable times. To each of the players,
apparently, the interest of a play centered in those
places in which he was engaged in speaking his lines;
and to each the author of the play was a more or less
benevolent despot, who had the happiness of the rest of
the world in his keeping. Once at a rehearsal, when
Thyrsis was engaged in cutting out one of the speeches
attributed to "Mrs. Ilartman", he discovered that lady
standing behind him in a flood of tears !

In the beginning Thyrsis paid many visits to the
apartment on Riverside Drive ; for Miss Lewis professed
to be very anxious that he should consult with her and
tell her his ideas of her part. But Thyrsis soon dis-
covered that what she really wanted was to have him
listen to her ideas. Miss Lewis was at war with Thyrsis'

THE END OF THE TETHER S75

portrayal of Helena — ^it was incomprehensible to her
that Llojd should not be pursuing her, and she playing
the coquette, according to all romantic models. Par-
ticularly she could not see how Lloyd was to resist the
particularly charming Helena which she was going to
make. She was always trying to make Thyrsis realize
this incongruity, and to persuade him to put some
"charming" lines into her part. "You boy !" she would
exclaim. "I believe you are as obstinate as your hero !"
Mss Lewis was only two years older than the "boy",
but she saw fit to adopt this grandmotherly attitude
toward him.

And then came Robertson Jones, suggesting a man
who could play the part of Lloyd. But Miss Liewis
declared indignantly that she would not have him, be-
cause he was not handsome enough. "If," she vowed,
"I've got to make love to a man and be rejected by him,
at least I'm not going to have it an ugly man !" When
an actor was finally agreed upon and engaged, Thyrsis
had a talk with him, and it seemed as if Miss Lewis,
in her preoccupation with his looks, had overlooked the
matter of his brains. But Thyrsis was so new at this
game that he did not feel capable of judging. He
shrunk from the thought of having any actor play
his part — ^that was so precious and so full of meaning
to him.

But when the rehearsals began, Thyrsis speedily for-
got this feeling. The most sensitive poet to the con-
trary notwithstanding, the purpose of a play is to be
acted; and Thyrsis was like an inventor, who has
dreamed a great machine, and now sees the parts of it
appearing as solid steel and brass ; sees them put to-
gether, and the great device getting actually under way.

The rehearsals were held in a little haU on the East

376 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Side, and thither came the company — ^six men and three
women. There was no furniture or setting, they all
wore their street clothing, and in the beginning they
went through their parts with the manuscript in their
hands. And yet — they had been selected because they
resembled the characters in the play; and every time
they went over the lines they gave them with more feel-
ing and understanding. So — vaguely at first, and then
more clearly — ^the poet began to see them as incarna-
tions of his vision. These characters had been creatures
of his fancy; they had lived in it, he had walked and
talked and laughed and wept with them. Now to dis-
cover them outside him — to be able to hear them with
his physical ears and see them with his physical eyes —
was one of the strangest experiences of his life. It was
so thrilling as to be almost uncanny. It was a new kind
of inspiration, of that strange "subliminal uprush"
which made the mystery of his life. And it was a kind
that others could experience with him. Corydon would
come every day to the rehearsals, and for four or five
hours at a stretch they would sit and watch and listen
in a state of perfect transport.

§ 7. Also, there were things not in the manuscript
which were sources of interest and delight. There was
Mr. Tapping, the stage director, for instance ; Thyrsis
could see himself writing another play, just to get Mr.
Tapping in. He was a man well on in years, and
wrecked by dissipation — almost bald and toothless, and
with one foot crippled with gout. Yet he was a perfect
geyser of activity — ^bounding about the stage, talking
swiftly, gesticulating — like some strange gnome or co-
bold out of the bowels of the earth. Thyrsis was the
creator of the play, so far as concerned the words ; but

THE END OF THE TETHER 377

this man was to be the creator of it on the stage. And
that, too, required a kind of genius, Thyrsis perceived.

Mr. Tapping had talked the problems out with him
at the beginning — talking until two o'clock in the morn-
ing, in a super-heated office filled with the smoke of ten
thousand dead cigars. He talked swiftly, eagerly, set-
ting forth his ideas ; to Thyrsis it was a most curious
experience — to hear the vision of his inmost soul trans-
lated into the language of the Tenderloin! "Your fid-
dler's this kind of a guy," Mr. Tapping would say —
"he knows he's got the goods, and he don't care whether
those old fogies think he's dippy, or what the hell they
think. Ain't that the dope, Mr. Author.?" And Thyr-
sis would answer faintly that he thought that was "the
dope." — This was a word that Mr. Tapping used every
time he opened his mouth, apparently ; it designated all
things connected with the play — character, dialogue,
action, scenery, music, costume. "That's the way to
dope it out to them !" he would cry to the actors.

Miss Lewis, and Mr. Tilford, the leading man, moved
through their parts with dignity; the stage director
showed them the "business" he had laid out, but they
did not trouble to act at rehearsals, and he did not
criticize what they did. But all the other people had
to be taught their roles and drilled in them; and that
meant that Mr. Tapping had to have in him five actors
and two actresses, and play all their seven parts as they
came. Marvellous it was to see him do this ; springing
from place to place, and changing his whole aspect in a
flash — now scolding shrewishly in the words of Violet
Hartman, now discoursing, with the accent and man-
ner of Prof, von Ame, upon the psychopathia sexualis
of Genius.

He did not know all the parts, of course; but that

378 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

was never allowed to trouble him. He would take a
sentence out of the actor's lips, and then go on to elab-
orate it in his Tenderloin dialect; or, if the scene wa«
highly emotional, and required swift speech, he would
fall back upon the phrase "and so and so, and so and
so." He could run the whole gamut of human emo-
tions with those words, "and so and so."

"No, that's no good!" he would cry to "Mrs. Hart-
man." "What are those words.' — 'Wretched, ungrate-
ful son — do you care nothing at all for your parents'
feelings.'' Do you owe us nothing for what we have
done.? And so and so.? And so and so.? And so and
so ?' " Mr. Tapping's voice would rise to a wail ; and
then in a flash he would turn to Moses Rosen (he called
all the actors by their character-names). "That's
your cue, Rosen, you rush in left Centre, and throw up
your hands — right herS — se6.? And what's your dope.?
— oh yes — 'I have spent seVen thousand dollars on this
thing! You have ruined me! You have betrayed me!
And so and so ! And so and so ! And so and so !' —
And then you run over here to the professor — ^"You
have trapped me ! And so and so !' "

Day by day as the work progressed, and the actors
came to know their lines, Thyrsis' excitement grew.
The great machine was running, he was getting some
sense of the power of it ! And new aspects of it were
revealed to him ; there came the composer who was to
do the incidental music, and the orchestra-leader who
was to conduct it ; there came the costume-designer and
the scene-painter, and even the press-agent who was to
"boost" the play, and wanted picturesque details about
the author's life. Corydon and Thyrsis were invited to
go with Mr. Tilford to select a wig, and with Mr. Tap-
ping to see the carpenters who were building the vari-

THE END OF THE TETHER 379

ous "sets", in a big loft over near the North River. As
the two walked home each day after these adventures,
it was all they could do to keep from hugging each
other on the street.

It was a thing of especial moment to Thy r sis, be-
cause it was the first time in his life that his art had
received any assistance from the outside world — the
first time this world had done anything but scold at him
and mock him. Here at last was recognition — here was
success ! Here were material things submitting them-
selves to his vision, coming to him humbly to be taught,
and to co-operate in the creation of beauty ! So Thyrsis
caught sudden glimpses of what his life might have
been. He was like a man who had been chained in a
black dungeon, and who now gets sight of the green
earth and the blue sky, and smells the perfume of the
flowers and hears the singing of the birds. With forces
such as this at his command, the power of his vision
would be multiplied tenfold; and he was transported
with the delight of the discovery, he and Corydon found
their souls once more in this new hope.

So out of these moods there began the burgeoning of
new plans in his mind. Even amid the rush of re-
hearsals, he was dreaming of other things to write;
some time before "The Genius" had reached the public,
he had finished the writing of "The Utopians"- — that
fragment of a vision which was perhaps the greatest
thing he ever did, and certainly the most characteristic.

§ 8. As usual, the immediate occasion of the writing
was trivial enough. It was his "leading lady" who
was responsible for it. Miss Lewis had taken a curious
fancy to Thyrsis — he was a new type to her, and it
pleased her to explore him. "How in the world

380 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

did you ever get him to marry you ?" she would exclaim
to Corydon. "I could as soon imagine a marble statue
making love to me!" And she told others about this
strange poet, who was obviously almost starving, and
yet had refused to let Richard Haberton revise his play
for him, and had all but refused to let Robertson Jones,
Inc., produce it. Before long she came to Thyrsis to
say that one of her friends desired to meet him, and
would he come to a supper-party.

Thyrsis heard this with perplexity.

"A supper-party !" he exclaimed. "But I can't !"

"Why not?"

"Why — I have no clothes."

"Nobody expects a poet to have clothes," laughed
Miss Lewis. "Come in the garments of your fancy.
And besides, Barry's a true Bohemian."

Barry Creston, the giver of this party, was one of
the sons of "Dan" Creston, the mine-owner and "rail-
road-king", who a short while before had been elected
senator from a Western state under circumstances of
great scandal. "The old man's a hard character, I
guess," said Miss Lewis ; "but you must not believe all
you read in the papers about Barry."

"I never read anything about him," said the other;
and so Miss Lewis went on to explain that Griswold, the
Wall Street plunger, had got a divorce from his wife
after throwing her into Barry's arms ; and that Barry's
sister had married an Austrian arch-duke who had mal-
treated her, and that Barry had kicked him out of a
hotel-window in Paris.

This invitation was a cause of much discomfort to
Thyrsis. He had not come to the point where he was
even curious about the life of the Barry Crestons of
the world; and yet he did not like to hurt Miss Lewis'

THE END OF THE TETHER 381

feelings. She made it evident to him that she was de-
termined to exhibit her "lion" ; and so he said "all
right."

The supper party was at the Cafe de Boheme, which
was an Aladdin's palace buried underground beneath a
building in the "Tenderloin". Fountains splashed in
marble basins, and birds sang amid the branches of
tropical flowering trees, while on a little stage a man in
the costume and character of a Paris apache sang a
song of ferocious cynicism. And after him came a
Japanese juggler of prodigious swiftness, and then a
fat German woman in peasant guise who sang folk-
songs, and wound up with "O, du lieber Augustin !"
After which the company joined in the chorus of "Funi-
culi, funicula" and "Gaudeamus igitur" — for the
patrons of the "Boheme" were nothing if they were not
cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan also was the company at Barry Cres-
ton's table. On one side of Thyrsis was Miss Lewis, and
on the other was Mile. Armand, the dancer who had set
New York in a furore. Opposite to her was Scarpi,
the famous baritone; and then there was Massey, a
sculptor from Paris, and Miss Rita Seton, of the "Red
Hussars" Company, and a Miss Raymond, a gorgeous
creature with a red flamingo feather in her hat, who had
been Massey's model for his sensational flgure of
"Aurora".

Finally there was Barry Creston himself : a new type,
and a disconcerting one. He was not at all the "gilded
youth" whom Thyrsis had expected to find; he was a
man of about thirty, widely cultured, urbane and
gracious in his manner, and quite evidently a man of
force. He was altogether free from that crude egotism
which Thyrsis had found to be the most prominent

382 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

characteristic of the American man of wealth. He
spoke in French with Armand and in Italian with
Scarpi and in German with the head-waiter who wor-
shipped before him ; and yet one did not feel that there
was any ostentation about it — all this was his monde.
And although he exhaled an atmosphere of vast wealth,
this, too, seemed a matter of course; he assumed that
you also were provided with unlimited funds — that aU
the world, in fact, was in the same fortunate case. Evi-
dently he was weU-known at the "Boheme", for the
waiters gathered like flies around the honey-pot, and
the august head-waiter himself took the order, and
beamed his approval at Barry's selections. So presently
there flowed in a stream of costly viands, served in
outre and fantastic fashion— many of them things not
known even by name to Thyrsis. There were costly
wines as well, and at the end an ice in the shape of a
great basket of fruit, wonderfully carved and colored
like life, resting upon a slab of ice, which in turn was
set in a silver tray with handles.

Thyrsis was dazed at all this waste, and at the up-
roar in the place, where dozens of other parties Avere
squandering money in the same blind fashion, and all
laughing, chatting, joining in the choruses with the
performers on the stage. Now and then he would catch
a little of his host's conversation, which was of all the
capitals of Europe, and of art-worlds, the very exist-
ence of which was unknown to him. And then, on his
left hand, there was Mile. Armand, deftly picking off'
the leaves of an artichoke and dipping them into mayoTV-
naise, and saying in her little bird's voice, "They teU
me, Monsieur, that you have du genie. Oh, you should
go to Paree to live — it is not here that one appreciates
du genie!" And, then while Thyrsis was working out

THE END OF THE TETHER 383

an explanation of his failure to visit Paris, some one
in the cafe caught sight of Scarpi, and there was a
general call for him ; and according to the genial cus-
tom of the "Boheme" he stood up, amid tumultuous ap-
plause, and sang one of his own rollicking songs.

So the revelry went forward, while Thyrsis mar-
velled, and tried to hide his pain. There could be no
question of any enjoyment for him — ^when he knew that
the cost of this affair would have paid all his expenses
for a winter ! Doubtless what Barry Creston spent for
his cigars would have saved Thyrsis and his family
from misery all their lives; and he wondered if the
man would have cared had he known. Barry was one
of the princes of the new dispensation ; and sometimes
princes were compassionate, Thyrsis reflected. Ap-
parently this one was all urbanity and charm, having
no thought in life save to play the perfect host to
brilliant artists arid demi-mondaines, and to skim the
cream off the top of civilization.

But then suddenly the conversation took a new turn,
and Thyrsis got another view of the young prince.
There had been trouble out in the Western mines ; and
some one mentioned it — when in a flash Thyrsis saw
the set jaw and the clenched fist and the steel grey eye
of old "Dan" Creston. (Thyrsis had read somewhere
a sketch of this senator, whose fortune was estimated
at fifty millions, and who ran the governments of three
states.) Barry, it seemed, had had charge of the mines
for three years — that was how he had won his spurs.
In those days, he said, there had been no unions — he
told with a quiet smile how he had broken them. Now
again "agitators" had crept in, so that in some of the
camps the men were being moved out bodily, and re-
placed by foreigners, who knew a good job when they

384 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

had it. To make this change had taken the militia ; but
it would be done thoroughly, and afterwards there would
be no more trouble.

The supper-party broke up about two o'clock, and
Miss Raymond, the lady of the flamingo hat, was the
only one who showed any effects from all the wine that
had been consumed. Thyrsis, to his great surprise,
discovered that his host had taken a fancy to him, and
had asked Miss Lewis to bring him out to luncheon at
the Creston place in the country. And so came the
wonderful experience which brought to him the vision
of "The Utopians."

§ 9. They went, one Saturday morning, in Miss
Lewis' automobile — out to Riverside Drive, and up the
valley of the Hudson. This was in itself a Utopian
experience for Thyrsis, who had never before taken a
trip in one of these magic chariots. It leaped over
the frozen roads like a thing of life, and he lay back in
the cushioned seats and closed his eyes and listened to
the hum of the machinery, imagining what life might
be for him, if he could rest like this when he was worn
from overwork. It was like some great adventure in
music, like a minstrel's chanting of heroic deeds ; it was
Nature with all her pageantry unrolled in a panorama
before his eyes. And meantime Miss Lewis was chatter-
ing on about the play and its prospects; and about
other plays and their prospects ; and about the people
at the supper-party and their various loves and hates.

So they came to the great stone castle of the Cres-
tons, set upon a mountain-top overlooking the valley of
this "American Rhine." Thyrsis gasped when he saw
it, and he gasped many times again while Barry was
showing them about. For this place was a triumph of

THE END OF THE TETHER 385

a hundred arts and sciences ; into its perfections had
gone all the skill of the architects and designers, the
weavers and carpenters, the painters and sculptors of
a score of centuries and climes. The very dairies, the
stables, the dog-kennels were things to be wondered at
and studied; and in the vast halls were single pictures
over which Thyrsis would fain have lingered for hours.
Then, best of all, the great portico, with its stone pil-
lars, and its view of the noble river, and of the snow-
clad hills, dazzling in the sunlight !

They had luncheon ; after which Barry played upon
the organ, and Miss Lewis sat beside him and left
Thyrsis to wander at will. He made his way out to the
portico, and paced back and forth there ; and while the
organ roUed and thundered to him, the majesty of the
scene swept over him, and in towering splendors his
soul arose. He thought of the wretched room in which
he was pent, he thought of his starved and strug-
gling life ; and all the rage of his defeated genius awoke
in him. In the name of that genius he uttered his de-
fiance, and by the title of it he took possession of this
castle, and of all things it contained. Yes — for he was
the true lord and master of it — ^he was the prince dis-
inherited ! And the meaning of it, its excuse for being,
was this brief hour ! For this its glories had been as-
sembled; for this the architects and designers, the
weavers and carpenters, the painters and sculptors had
labored in a score of centuries and climes ; for this the
great organ had been built, and for this the great musi-
cian had composed — that he might behold, in one hour
of transfiguration, what the life of man would be in
that glad time when all the arts of civilization were
turned to the fostering of the soul ! When he who car-
ried in the womb of his spirit the new life of the ages.

386 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

would be loved instead of being hated, would be cherished
instead of being neglected, would be reverenced instead
of being mocked ! When palaces would be built for him,
and beauty and joy would be gathered for him, and the
paths would be made clear before his feet! So out of
boundless love and rapture would he speak to men, and
bring to them those gifts that were beyond price, the
treasures of his unfolding inspiration.

So it was that the Utopians came to Thyrsis ; those
men of the future, worshippers of joy! They came to
him, alive and in the flesh, beautiful and noble, gracious
and free-hearted — as some day they will come, if so the
earth endure; as they will stand upon that portico,
and listen to that music, and gaze upon the valley of
that American Rhine! And will they remember the
long-dead dreamer, and how they walked with him there
and spoke with him ; how they put their arms about him,
and gave him of their love and understanding? Will
they remember what shuddering rapture their touch
conveyed to him ; how the tears ran down his cheeks,
and he pledged his soul to yet more years of torment,
so only their glory might come to be upon earth? Will
they read the blazing words in which he pictured them,
the trumpet-blast he sounded to the dead souls of his
time ?

Thyrsis knew that this was the greatest hour of his
life, and he fought like mad to hold it. But that rnight
not be — the music ceased, and he heard the voices of
his host and Miss Lewis. They came to the door ; and
then Thyrsis' thoughts came back quickly to earth.
For he saw that Barry Creston's arm was about the
woman, and she was leaning upon him; nor did they
separate when they saw him, but stood there, smiling;
so that at last Thyrsis had solved for him the problem

THE END OF THE TETHER 387

of their relationship. It was not so that the Utopians
loved, he thought, as he watched them ; and found him-
self wondering if young Creston was as imperious with
his women as he was with the slaves in his Western
mines.

The car came to the door, and they parted from their
host and sped back to the city. "What do you think
of him?" asked Miss Lewis — and went on in a burst of
confidence to tell him that it was to this prince of the
new dispensation that he owed the great chance of his
life. For it was Barry Creston who had given the
Broadway "show-girl" the start that had made her a
popular comedienne; it was Barry Creston who had
awakened in her an interest in the "drama of ideas",
and had set her to fermenting with new ambitions ; and
finally it was Barry Creston who in a moment of in-
dulgence had promised the money which had set the
managers and actors and musicians, the stage-carpen-
ters and scene-painters and press-agents to work at the
task of embodying "The Genius"!

§ 10. It may have been a coincidence ; but from
that hour dated the process of Thyrsis' disillusionment
concerning the production of his play. Could it be,
he asked himself, that such wealth as Barry Creston's
could buy true art? Could it be that forces set in
motion by it could reaUy express his vision? "Genius
surroimded by Commercialism", had been the formula
of his play; and did not the formula describe his own
position as well as Lloyd's?

A strange thing was this theatrical business — the
business of selling emotions ! One had really to feel the
emotions, in order to portray them with force ; yet one
had at the same time to appraise them with the eye of

388 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

the business-man — one must not feel emotions that would
not pay. Also,, one boomed and boosted his own par-
ticular emotions, celebrating their merits in the lan-
guage of the circus-poster. If you had taken up a cer-
tain play, you considered it the greatest play that had
ever made its bow to Broadway ; and you actually per-
suaded yourself to believe it — at least those who made
the real successes were men who possessed that hyp-
notic power.

There was, for instance, Mr. Rosenberg, the press-
agent and advertising-man. He was certain that "The
Genius" was a play of genius, and its author a man of
genius ; and yet Thyrsis knew that if it had been Meyer
and Levinson, across the street, who were producing it,
Mr. Rosenberg would have called it "rot". Mr. Rosen-
berg was to Thyrsis a living embodiment of Moses
Rosen in the play — so much so that he felt the re-
semblance in the names to be perilous, and winced every
time he heard Rosenberg speak of Rosen. But fortu-
nately neither Rosenberg nor Rosen possessed a sense
of irony, and so there were no feelings hurt. Thyrsis
had written the play without having met either a press-
agent or the head of a music-bureau ; he had drawn the
character of Moses after the fashion of the German,
evolving the idea of an elephant out of his inner con-
sciousness. But now that it was done, he was amazed
to see how well it was done; he was like an astronomer
who works out the orbit of a new planet, and after-
wards discovers it with his telescope.

As the preparations neared completeness, Thyrsis
found himself more and more disturbed about the pro-
duction. He was able to judge of the actors now, and
they seemed to him to be cheap actors — to be relying
for their effects upon exaggeration, to be making the

THE END OF THE TETHER 389

play into a farce. But when he pointed this out to
Mr. Tapping, Mr. Tapping was offended; and when
•he spoke to Mr. Jones, he was referred to Miss Lewis.
AH he could accomplish with Miss Lewis, however, was
to bring up the eternal question of the lack of "charm"
in her part. Poor Ethelynda was also getting into an
unhappy frame of mind ; she had begun to doubt
whether the "drama of ideas" was her forte after all —
and whether the ideas in this particular drama were
real ideas or sham. She got the habit of inviting
friends in to judge it, and she was always of the opinion
of the last friend; so the production was like a ship
whose pilot has lost his bearings.

The time drew near for the opening-performance,
which was to be given in a manufacturing city in New
England. The nerves of all the company were stretched
to the breaking point ; and overwrought as he was him-
self, Thyrsis could not but pity the unhappy "leading
lady", who could hardly keep herself together, even
with the drugs he saw her taking.

The "dress-rehearsal" began at six o'clock on Sun-
day evening; and from the very start everything went
wrong. But Thyrsis did not know the pecuhar fact
about dress-rehearsals, that everything always goes
wrong ; and so he suffered untellable agonies at the
sight of the blundering and stupidity. Mr. Tapping
stormed and fumed and hopped about the stage, and
swore, first at his gouty foot, and then at .some mem-
ber of the company ; and he sent them back, over and
over again through the scenes — it was midnight before
they finished the first act, and it was six o'clock in the
morning before they finished the second, and it was
nearly noon of Monday before the wretcted men and
women went home to sleep.

S90 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Thyrsis had left before that, partly because he could
not endure to see the mess that things were in, and
partly because they told him he would have to make a*
s.peech that night, and he had to spend two of his hard-
earned dollars for the hire of a dress-suit. Here, as
always, the scarcity of dollars was like a thorn in his
flesh. He had been obliged to leave Corydon heart-
broken at home, because he had not been able to lay ,
by enough to bring her; he had to stay at a cheap
hotel — cheaper even than any of the actors; and when
Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping went out to lunch, he
would have to say that he was not hungry, and then
go off and get something at a corner grocery.

The hour of the performance came ; and Thyrsis, like
a gambler who has staked all his possessions upon the
turn of one card, sat in a box and watched the audience
and the play. The house was crowded; and the play-
wright saw with amazed relief that all his agonies of
the night before had been needless — the performance
went without a hitch from beginning to end. And also,
to his unutterable delight, the play seemed to "score".
He had gazed at the rows of respectable burghers of
this prosperous manufacturing town, and wondered
what understanding they could have of his tragedy of
"genius". But they seemed to be understanding; at
any rate they laughed and applauded; and when Lloyd
smashed the violin over von Arne's head and the cur-
tain went down, there was quite a little uproar.

Thyrsis came out and made his timid speech, which
was also applauded; and then came the last act, and
the women got out their handkerchiefs on schedule time,
and Mr. Rosenberg stood behind Thyrsis in the box,
rubbing his hands together gleefully. So the play-
wright sent a telegram to his wife, saying that the play

THE END OF THE TETHER 391

was a certain success ; and then he went to bed, as-
suredly the happiest man who had ever slept in that
fifty-cent hotel !

But alas — the next morning, there were the local
papers ; and with one accord they all "roasted" the play !
Their accounts of it sounded for all the world like the
play itself — those extracts which the two professors
had read from the criticisms of Lloyd's concert ! Thyr-
sis wondered if the critics must not have taken offence
at the satire!

Then, going to the theatre, the first person he met
was Rosenberg, who sent another chill to his heart.
"First nights are always good," said Mr. Rosenberg.
"It was all 'paper', you know. To-night is the real
test."

And so the second performance came; and in the
theatre were some two hundred people, and the occa-
sion was the most awful "frost" that ever froze the
heart of an unhappy partisan of the "drama of ideas"-
After which, according to schedule, the play moved to
another manufacturing town ; and in the theatre were
some two hundred and fifty people — and a frost some
ten degrees lower yet!

§ 11. So at twelve o'clock that night there was a
consultation in a room at the hotel, attended by Thyrsis
and Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping and Mr. Jones.

"You see," said the last named; "the play is a
failure."

"Absolutely !" said Mr. Tapping.

"I knew it would be!" cried Miss Lewis.

"And you.'"' asked Mr. Jones of Thyrsis.

"It has not succeeded in these towns," said Thyrsis.
"But then — ^how could it succeed, except where there

392 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

are intellectual people? You promised to take it to
New York."

"It's no use!" declared Jones. "New York would
laugh it dead in one night."

"It would," said Mr. Tapping, decisively.

"I knew it all along," cried Miss Lewis.

So they went on for ten minutes ; and then, "What
are you going to do?" asked Thyrsis, in terror.

"The play must be altered," said Jones.

"How altered?"

"It must be altered as Miss Lewis asked you at first."

Thyrsis sprang up. "What!" he cried.

"It must be done!" said Mr. Jones.

"It must," said Mr. Tapping.

"I knew it aU along!" cried Miss Lewis again.

"But I won't stand for it!" exclaimed Thyrsis,
wildly.

"It must be done!" said Mr. Jones, in his heaviest
steam-roller tone.

"But I won't have it!"

"What'U you do?"

"I'll go to law! I'll get an injunction."

"What is there in our contract to prevent our alter-
ing the play?" demanded the man.

"What !" gasped Thyrsis. "You know what our un-
derstanding was!"

"Humph!" said the other. "Can you prove it?"

"And do you mean that you would go back on that
understanding ?"

"And do you mean that you expect me to see this
money wasted and the play sent to pot?"

Thyrsis, in his agony, turned to Miss Lewis. "Will
you let him break our bargain?" he cried.

"But what else is there to be done?" she answered.

THE END OF THE TETHER 393

"Don't you see that the play is a failure? And don't
you see the plight you've got me in ?"

Thyrsis was dumb with dismay. He stared from one
of these people to another, and his heart went down —
down. He saw that his case was hopeless. He had no
one to help him or to advise him, and he had less than
eleven dollars in his pocket.

"What do you propose to do?" he asked, weakly.

"I have already telegraphed to Richard Haberton,"
said Jones. "He will meet us and see the next two per-
formances ; and then we'U lay the company off until
we get some kind of a practical play."

And so the steam-roller rolled and the matter was
settled; and Thyrsis, broken-hearted, bid the trio fare-
well, and took an early train back to New York.

He never saw any member of the company again —
and he never saw the "practical play" which Mr.
Richard Haberton made out of "The Genius". What
was done he gathered from the press-clippings that
came to him — the famous author of "The Rajah's
Diamond" caused Helena to fall into Lloyd's arms at
the end of the second act, and had them safely if not
happily married at the beginning of the third. Also
he wrote several "charming" scenes for Ethelynda
Lewis, and two weeks later the play had a second open-
ing in another manufacturing town of New England —
where the critics, awed by the name of the distinguished
dramatist upon the play-bills, were moved to faint
praise. But perhaps it was that Mr. Richard Haber-
ton required more than two weeks' time for the evolving
of real "charm" ; at any rate the audience came in no
larger numbers to see this new version, and the misbe-
gotten production lived for another six performances.

394 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and died a peaceful death at the very gates of the
metropolis.

And such was the end of Thyrsis' career as a play-
wright. In return for all his labors and his agonies
he received some weeks later a note from Robertson
Jones, Inc., to the effect that the books of "The
Genius" showed a total deficit of six thousand seven
hundred and forty-two dollars and seventeen cents ; and
accordingly, under the contract, there was nothing due
to the author.

Book XI
THE TORTURE-HOUSE

They sat in the darkness, watching where the star-
light gleamed upon the water.

"We had always hope," she was saipng. "How end-
lessly we hoped!"

"Could we do it now?" he asked; and after a pause,
he quoted from the poem —

"Unbreachable the fort
Of the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall;

And strange and vain the earthly turmoU grows.
And Tiear and real the charm of thy repose.
And night as welcome as a friend would fall!"

§ 1. Thyrsis came home beaten and crushed, worn
out with overwork and worry, his heart black with rage
and bitterness and despair. He met Corydon in the
park, and she listened to his story, white and terrified.
She had swallowed all her disappointment, had stayed
at home with the baby while he went with the play ; and
now the outcome of it all was this !

"What are you going to do?" she whispered; and he
answered, "I don't know. I don't know."

She saw the terrible state he was in, and she dared
not utter a single word of her own grief. She bit her
lip, and choked back her tears. "This is my life," she
thought to herself; "I must endure, endure — that is
all!"

He could not afford even to sit and talk with her
very long ; there was no time to indulge in the luxury
of despair. His money was gone, and he was in debt
for some that he had borrowed. Since irregular eat-
ing had been telling upon him again, he had been get-
ting his meals with an acquaintance of the family, who
kept a boarding-house uptown. On the strength of his
prospects, she had trusted him for four dollars a week ;
and now the play had failed, and he had to go and
tell her, and listen to new protests as to his folly in
refusing to "get a position". But in the end she bade
him stay on ; and so he was divided between his shame,
and the need of something to eat day by day.

Time draped on, and still there was no gleam of
light. There were shameful hours in these weeks —

397

S98 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

he touched the lowest point yet in his life. This was a
typical cheap boarding-house, a place where the drudges
of trade were herded ; it. was a home of sordidness and
ugliness — to Thyrsis its people seemed like carefully-
selected types of all things that he hated in the world.
There was a young broker's clerk, whose patter was of
prices, and of fortunes made without service. There
was a grey-haired bookkeeper for a giant "trust", a
man who could not have had more pride in that great
engine of exploitation, or more contempt for its vic-
tims, had he been the president and chief owner thereof.
There was a young divinity-student, who made greedy
reaches for the cake-plate, and who summed up for
Thyrsis all the cant and commonness of the church.
There was a dry-goods clerk, who wore flaring ties, and
who played the role of a "masher" upon the avenue
every evening. And finally there was a red-faced Irish-
man who wore large shiny cuffs and a false diamond,
and who held some political job, and was voluble in be-
half of "the organization".

Among these people Thyrsis sat three times a day,
silent and tortured, paying a high price for each morsel
of food he ate. But also he was lonely, and craving
any sort of respite ; and in the course of time he be-
came acquainted with several of the younger men. One
of the diversions in their pitiful and narrow lives was
to gather in some room and indulge in petty gambling ;
sitting for hours upon hours with their faculties alert
upon the attempt to get from each other some small
fraction of that weekly stipend which kept them alive.
Sometimes they played "penny-ante", and sometimes
vingt et un; once, as it chanced, they needed another
player, and they urged Thyrsis to join them.

And so, for the first time in his life, Thyrsis learned

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 399

what it meant to lay his soul upon the lap of the god-
dess of chance. From eight o'clock that evening until
two the next morning, he sat in a suiFocating room full
of cigarette-smoke, trying in vain to win back the dol-
lar or two he had lost at the outset; flushed and trem-
bling with excitement, and hating himself with a bitter
and tormenting hatred. And so he discovered his vice;
he discovered that he had in him the soul of the gambler !
And all the rest of the winter he had to wrestle with
that shame. He would go to his dinner, tired and
heartsick ; and they would ask him to play again ; and
he — the man who carried a message for humanity in his
heart — he would yield! Three times during that win-
ter he fell into the mire; on Washington's birthday he
began to play in the morning, and stopping only for
meals, he played until long after midnight. Forever
afterwards he was a humbler and a gentler man be-
cause of that experience ; understanding how squalor
abases one, and how swiftly and stealthily an evil pas-
sion closes its grasp about the soul.

§ 2. Of this shameful thing he said not a word to
Corydon. But he avoided meeting her, because of the
depths of his despair. And so at last there came a
letter from her — a long and unusual one. Corydon,
too, was having her troubles, it appeared.

"I am writing in haste," she said ; "I shall mail the
letter at once, before my resolution fails me. At least
a dozen times I have made up my mind to tell you or
to write you what is here, and each time I have turned
back. But now I have got to a stage where I must have
your help.

"I enclose a long letter which I wrote you years ago,
before we were married. I was looking over some old

400 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

papers the other day and came upon it. Generally
when I wrote you letters that I did not send, I tore
them up ; but something led me to keep this one — I had
a feeling that some day it would be interesting as a
curiosity. You see, I am always persuading myself that
I can get over this trouble, and learn to laugh at it;
and I am always succeeding — ^but only to have it crop
up in some different form. I have told you a little of
it now and then — ^but stop and read the enclosed, and
you will see."

So Thyrsis I'ead the old letter — a missive of anguish
and terror, and beginning with elaborate preludings
and hesitations :

"I implore you to be patient with me this once ; and
when I have gotten through, I want you still to love
me, if possible. I have been trying to get the courage
to write you something that is so mean and low, childish
and almost imbecile, that there have been moments in
which my horror of it was absolutely unspeakable;
when I have imagined myself as a soul damned,
when I thought that if you knew, you would think I
had a diseased brain. I only ask you to read patiently
what I am going to write ; but know that every word is
a horrible effort, that it is torture and humiliation to
me to write it. I have a feeling now as though I were
psychologically dissecting something.

"It must have been eight years ago, when I was sick
in bed; in a fever or delirium I conceived the idea that
there was a coffin under my bed. The thought took
hold of me, somehow, like an octopus, and I used to
writhe under it, and get into fearful perspirations. I
never went near a bed that I didn't think of this thing
with the same horror.

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 401

"And so I seemed to have created a nervousness, a
sense of dread, before which I was absolutely helpless.
I cannot tell you how hopelessly or fearfully I suffered,
or what depths of despondency and despair and black-
ness I was cast into. I cannot understand how a
creature could so manufacture torments for itself. But
this is not all, just for once have mercy — and yet even
now I am laughing at myself!

"The winter I was sixteen I was much disappointed
that I could not go to college, and almost the whole
winter, when I was not diverted, I would brood over this
habit. As I grew older, it would come to me in spasms,
and it seemed to my dawning sense so monstrously child-
like, so insane, that I was aghast that it had power to
affect me. I can find no words to tell you of the un-
speakable horror with which I saw, in my older days,
that a thought could so torment me; the mere fact of
its being able to torment I could never forget. I know
it was siUy, unreasonable ; and yet every time it came
to me I would be plunged into a hopelessness animelan-
choly, than which I can honestly conceive nothing more
fearful upon earth.

"Well, I continued to pursue myself with this mor-
bidity (I would almost, rather kill myself than write
Ibis). As I got older my terror was less, but my
melancholy greater, until I would be only half con-
scious of what I was allowing myself to do. I seemed
to have engendered within myself a hob-goblin. Once
— it was only last winter — I saw a nasty word written
on a fence, and it sent a shudder through me, for I
knew it would follow me and, make me think of other
things like it. I felt, since thoughts have such power
to terrorize me, how can I ever get away from them?

"Oh, how I have struggled — tried to say it was not

402 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

true — ^^that I was just as sane as other people! And
this made my thirst for beauty all the more maddening,
and my melancholy all the more complete ! So I have
lived, at intervale, and words cannot describe the heU
that I have endured, the more horrible because it
seemed to me so unreasonable, so insane. It occurred
to me more or less this summer, though in a milder
form ; but it often frightened me more than ever, as I
felt how beautiful you were, and what you would think
of me, if you knew I was capable of being the prey of
such thoughts. So they were always more dreadful to
me.

"Can you possibly understand how the thought of a
word could make me shudder.? The mere idea of my be-
ing capable of thinking of anything that was not
beautiful ! When I longed to be only the embodiment of
beauty — and sometimes I am beautiful! I look into
the glass, and I seem to have something in my face that
is a promise of a glory to come — a light, a something,
— I love to imagine it. And then, that a thought
should knock me prone, and make me cringe — from the
mere fact of its lowness and meanness !

"For the last two or three days I have again vic-
timized myself ; and when I was not studying I was ask-
ing myself in anguish what was the matter with me,
and if there was no hope for me on earth. I dodged
around and tried to laugh it off, then I went to the
piano and lost myself in the dissatisfaction of my play-
ing; but when I stopped, I was conscious of a great
depression, as though I were chained in a dungeon. I
jumped up, and said I could stand it no longer. I
will tell Thyrsis, I said; but no, I will die first! I
added. He could not tolerate me afterwards, he would
think me only fit for the insane-asylum. Oh, why

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 403

should I be so cursed? And then, somehow, I imagined
that I told you, and that you laughed at me, that you
pitied me — and that you held out your hand, and said,
'Come, you shall find beauty — poor, deluded, wretched,
little creature!' I really imagined that this had hap-
pened, and I was relieved as with a draught of fresh
air.

"Oh, God in Heaven, to think that I could ever have
been so degraded! My head hurts, and I absolutely
am dazed, to think that I have been able to write you of
something for which (though it has not been my mak-
ing) I am so ashamed and humiliated I can hardly hold
my head up. I think in my short life I have atoned for
the sins of many souls."

§ 3. Such was the old-time letter. "And now,"
wrote Corydon, "I don't want you to think that if I did
not send you this, it was because I was afraid to do
'it, or unwilling to trust to your love. It was simply
because I felt that I could conquer these things — that
it would be weak and contemptible of me not to do so.
Nor is the reason I write you now that I have not been
able to conquer them, that I am still at the mercy of
such habits. I am a grown woman, and I am not afraid
of words ; I tell myself this a hundred times ; and it is
true — and yet there is a way in which it is not true.
The thing is so intricate — I never get to the end of it;
I rid myself of the fear of a hateful idea, but there
remains the fact that I should have been afraid ; there
is the fear of fear. And then comes a flood of shame
— that I should have it in me to be afraid of fear !

"Thyrsis, as I write to you now I see clearly how
perfectly preposterous and unreal all this is ; and again
there comes to me the impulse to tear up this letter,

404 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and banish the troop of hob-goblins from my mind.
But no, this time I am determined to make a clean breast
of the thing — for I see that secrecy and solitude are
what it feeds on. If I were happy and busy with you,
such ideas would have no power over me. But think
how it is, with my loneliness and despair ! I don't want
to say anything to make your task harder — but oh,
Thyrsis, it is frightful to have nothing to do but wait,
and wait, and wait! The baby wakes me up in the
night and I lie for hours — it is at such times that these
phantoms take hold of me. Do you realize that I liter-
ally never know what it is to have more than three or
four consecutive hours of sleep.''

"No, I am not insane, I tell myself ; I am not insane !
It is the circumstances of my life that cause this melan-
cholia and misery. It has been my life, from the very
beginning — for what a hopeful and joyous creature I
would have been, had I only had a chance as a girl!
I know that; and you must tell it to me, and help me'
to believe it."

Thyrsis read this with less surprise than Corydon
had imagined ; for she had been wont to drop hints
about her trouble from time to time. He was shocked,
however, to find what a hold it had taken upon her ;
the thing sent a chill of fear to his heart. Could it be
after all that she had some taint.'' But he saw at once
that he must not let her see any such feeling ; the least
hint of it would have driven her to distraction. On
the contrary, he must minimize the trouble, must help
her to laugh it away, as she asked.

He went to meet her in the park, and found her in
an agony of distress; she had mailed the letter, and
then she had wished to recall it, and had been struggling

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 405

ever since with the idea that he would be disgusted with
her. Now, when she found that such was not the case,
that he still loved her and trusted her, she was trans-
ported with gratitude.

"But dearest," he said, "how absurd it is to be
ashamed of an idea ! If ugly things exist, don't we have
to hear of them and know of them? And so why
frighten ourselves because they are in our minds?"

"But Thyrsis," cried she, "they are so hateful!"

"Yes," he said. "But theii the more you hate them,
the more they haunt you !"

"That's just it!" she exclaimed.

"But what harm can they do? Can they have any
eifect upon your character? You must say to yourself
that all this is a consequence of the structure of your
brain-cells. What could be more futile than trying to
forget? As if the very essence of the trying was not
remembering !"

So Thyrsis went on to argue with her. He made her
promise him that in future she would tell him of all
her obsessions, permitting no fear or shame to deter
her; and so thereafter he would have to listen periodi-
cally to long accounts of her psychological agonies,
and help her to hunt out the "hob-goblins" from the
tangled thickets of her mind. They were forever set-
tling the matter, positively and finally — ^but alas, only
to have something unsettle it again. So Thyrsis had
to add to his other accomplishments the equipment of
a psycho-pathologist; he brushed up his French, and
read learned treatises upon the researches in the Sal-
petriere, and the theories of the "Nancy School".

§ 4. Another month passed by, and still there was
no rift in the clouds. Once more Corydon was for-

406 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

bidden to see him, and so her pain grew day by day.
At last there came another letter, voicing utter despera-
tion. Something must be done, she declared, she was
slowly going out of her mind. Thyrsis could have no
idea of the shamefulness of her position, the humilia-
tions she had to face. "I tell you the thing is putting
a brand upon my soul," she wrote. "It is something
I shall never get over all my life. It is withering me
up — it is destroying my self-respect, my very decency ;
it is depriving me of my power to act, or even to think.
People come in, relatives or friends — even strangers to
me — and peer at me and pry into my affairs ; I hear
them whispering in the parlor — 'Hasn't he got a posi-
tion yet.?' or 'How can she have anything to do with
him?' The servants gossip about me — the woman I
have for a nurse despises me and insults me, and I have
not the courage to rebuke her. To-day I went almost
wild with fury — I rushed into the bathroom and locked
the door and flung myself upon the floor. I found my-
self gnawing at the rug in my rage — I mean that
literal]}'. That is what life has left for me!

"I tell you you must take me away, we must get out
of this fiendish city. Let us go into the wilderness as
you said, and live as we can — I would rather starve to
death than face these things. Let us get into the
country, Thyrsis. You can work as a farm-hand, and
earn a few dollars a week — surely that could not be a
greater strain upon us than the way things are now."

When Thyrsis received this, he racked his brains
once more; and then he sat down and wrote a letter to
Barry Creston. He told how he had worked over the
play, and how it had gone to ruin ; he told of his
present plight. He knew, he said, that Mr. Creston
had been interested in the play, and that he was a man

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 407

who understood the needs of the artist-life. Would he
lend two hundred dollars, which would suffice until
Thyrsis could get another work completed?

He waited a week for a reply to this ; and when it
arrived he opened it with trembling fingers. He half
expected a check to fall fluttering to the floor ; but alas,
there was not a single flutter. "I have read your let-
ter," wrote the young prince, "and I have considered
the matter carefully. I would do what you ask, were
it not for my conviction that it would not be a good
thing for you. It seems to me the testimony of all ex-
perience, that artists do their great work under the
spur of necessity. I do not believe that real art can
ever be subsidized. It is for men that you are writing ;
and you must find out how to make men hear you. You
may not thank me for this now, but some day you will,
I believe."

After duly pondering which communication, Thyrsis
racked his wits, and bethought him of yet another per-
son to try. He sat himself down and addressed Mr.
Robertson Jones. He explained that he was in this cruel
plight, owing to his having devoted so many months to
"The Genius." Even the actors had received something
for the performances of the play they had given ; but
the author had received nothing at all. He asked Mr.
Jones for a personal loan to help him in a great emer-
gency ; and he promised to repay it at the earliest pos-
sible moment. To which Mr. Jones made this reply —
"Inasmuch as the failure of the play was due solely to
your own obstinacy, it seems to me that your present
experiences are affording exactly the discipline you
need."

§ 6. However, there are many ups and downs in

408 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

the trade of free-lance writer. The very day after he
had received this letter, there came, in quick succession,
two bursts of sunlight through the clouds of Thyrsis'
despair. The first was a letter, written in a quaint
script, from a man who explained that he was interested
in a "Free People's Theatre" in one of the cities of
Germany. "You will please to accept my congratula-
tions," he wrote; "I had never known such a play as
yours in America to be written. I should greatly be
pleased to translate the play, so that it might be known
in Germany. Our compensation would have to be little,
as you will understand ; but of appreciation I think you
may receive much in the Fatherland."

To which Thyrsis sent a cordial response, saying that
he would be glad of any remuneration, and enclosing a
copy of the manuscript of "The Genius". And then —
only two days later — came the other event, a stiU more
notable one ; a letter from the publisher who had been
number thirty-seven on the list of "The Hearer of
Truth". Thyrsis had got so discouraged about this
work that he now sent it about as a matter of routine,
and without thinking of it at all. Great, therefore, was
his amazement when he opened the letter and read that
this publisher was disposed to undertake it, and would
be glad to see him and talk over terms.

Thyrsis went, speculating on the way as to what
strange manner of being this publisher might be. The
solution of the mystery he found was that the publisher
was new at the business, and had entrusted his "literary
department" to a very young man who had enthusiasms.
The young man held his position for only a month or
two; but in that month or two Thyrsis got in his
"innings".

The publisher wished to bring the book out that

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 409

spring. He offered a ten per cent, royalty, and the
trembling author summoned the courage to ask for one
hundred dollars advance ; when he got it, he was divided
between his delight, and a sneaking regret that he had
not tried for a hundred and fifty!

The very next day came the contracts and the money ;
Thyrsis marvelled at the fact that there were people
who could sign checks for a hundred dollars, and
apparently not mind it in the least. With the
money he was able to pay all his debts, and also a bill
which Corydon had received from a "specialist" who
had been treating her. This was a new habit that Cory-
don was developing, as a result of headaches and back-
aches and other obscure miseries. These amiable "spe-
cialists" permitted one to run up a bill with them ; and
so, whenever Thyrsis made a new "strike", there were
always debts to eat up the greater part of it.

They had now another hope to lure them ; new proofs
to read, and in due time, new reviews. But it would be
fall before they could expect more money from the book,
and meantime there was still the problem of the sum-
mer. So, as usual, Thyrsis was plotting and planning,
groping about him and trying one desperate scheme
after another ; his head was like a busy workshop, from
which came every hour new plans, new expedients, new
experiments. And meanwhile, of course, deep down in
his soul there was forming the new work, that some day
would emerge and take possession of him, driving every-
thing else from his consciousness.

People would repeat to him, over and over, their
dreary formula — ^"Get a position! (Jet a position P'
And patiently, unwearyingly, Thyrsis would set himself
to explain to them what it was like to be inspired. It
was not perversity upon his part, it was not conceit ; it

410 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

was no more these than it was laziness. It was some-
thing that was in him — something that he had not put
there himself, something that he could not take out of
himself; a thing that took possession of him, without any
intention upon his part, without any permission ; a thing
that required him to do certain acts, and that tore him
to pieces if he did not do them. And how should he be
blamed because he could not do as other men — because
he could not tsike care of himself, nor even of his wife
and child? Because he could not have any rights, be-
cause he could not possess the luxuries of manhood
and self-respect.'' Because, in short, he was cast out
into the gutter for every dog to snarl at and for every
loafer to spurn? Could it be that in this whole civili-
zation, with its wealth and power, its culture and learn-
ing, its sciences and arts and religions — there was not
to be found one single man or woman who could recog-
nize such a state of affairs, and realize what it meant?

§ 6. About this time Thyrsis thought of another
plan. Perhaps he might get some one to publish the
play in book form — ^that would bring him a httle money,
and possibly also it might help him to interest some
other manager or actor. So he took the manuscript
to his friend Mr. Ardsley, who told him it would not
sell, and then gave him another lecture upon his folly
in not having written the "practical" novel; and then
he took it to the publisher for whom Prof. Osborne
acted as reader. So he had another conference with
that representative of authority.

"I'U get him some day," Thyrsis had said to him-
self, after their last interview; and he found that he
had almost "got" him now. There was no chance of
the play's selling, said the professor, and therefore

THE TORTURE-HOUSE '411

no recommending it for publication; but it was indeed
a remarkable piece of work — one might possibly say
that it was a great piece of work.

To which the author responded, "Why can't one
say that surely?"

"I'm not quite sure," said the other, "whether your
violinist is a genius, or only thinks he is."

Thyrsis pondered this. "That's rather an important
question," he said.

"Yes," admitted the other.

"There ought to be some way of deciding such a
question definitely."

"Yes, there ought to be."

"But there isn't?"

"No — I'm afraid there isn't. We know too little
about genius as yet."

"But, professor," said Thyrsis, "you are a critic —
you write books of criticism. And that's the one ques-
tion a critic has to answer."

"Yes, I know," said Prof. Osborne.

"And yet, when you face the issue, you give up."

"It has generally taken a long time to decide such a
matter," was the professor's reply.

"Yes, it has," said the other; "and meantime the
man is starved out."

There was a pause. "You have never had any such
experience yourself?" asked Thyrsis. "Of inspiration,
I mean."

"No," was the answer. "I couldn't pretend to."

"So your judgments are never from first-hand knowl-
edge ?"

The professor hesitated. "I am dealing with you
frankly " he began.

"I know," said Thyrsis, "and I appreciate that. You

412 LOVE'S PELGREVfAGE

understand that it's an important point for me to
get clear. I've felt that all along about you — I've felt
it about so many others who set themselves against me.
And yet I have to bear the burden of their condemna-
tion "

"I never condemned you," interposed the other.

"Ah, but you did!" cried Thyrsis. "You told me
that I knew less about writing than anyone in your
class ! And you spoke as one who had authority."

"But you had given no indications in the class-
room "

"I know ! I know ! I tried to get you to see the
reason. I wanted to create literature; and you set me
down with a lot of formulas — ^you told me to write
about The Duty of the College Man to Support
Athletics !' "

"It's difficult to see," began Prof. Osborne, "how
we could teach college boys to create literature "

"At least," said the other, "you need not follow a
method which would make it impossible for one of them
to create literature if he had it in him."

"Does it seem to you as bad as that.'"' asked the
professor, a little disturbed.

"It truly does," said Thyrsis.

"But what would you say we could do .""'

To which the boy replied, "You might try to get
your pupils to feel one deep emotion about hfe, or to
think one worth-while thought; then they might stand
a chance of knowing how it feels to write."

§ 7. Thyrsis was still reading in the papers and
magazines of philanthropists and public-spirited citi-
zens ; and he was still sitting down to write them and
explain his plight. He would beg them to believe that

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 418

he wanted nothing but a bare hving ; and he would send
copies of his books or articles or manuscripts, and ask
these people t» read them. And about this time an un-
usual thing happened — one of these philanthropists an-
swered his letter. He wrote that he did not agree with
Thyrsis' ideas, by any means, but appreciated the power
of his writing, and was certain that he had a career be-
fore him. Whereupon Thyrsis made haste to foUow up
his advantage, and wrote another letter — one of the
most intense and impassioned that he ever composed in
his life.

He told about the new book he was dreaming. For
years he had read his country's history, and lived in
it and thrilled with it. Especially had he read the
Civil War ; and now he was planning a book that should
hold the War, and all the meanings of the War, as a
wine-cup holds the rich flavors and aromas of the grape.
A titan struggle it had been, the birth-agony of a na-
tion ; and it was a thing to be contemplated with amaze-
ment, that it should have produced so little in the way
of art. Half a dozen poems there were ; but of novels
not one above the grade of juvenile fiction.

What Thyrsis was planning was a new form; a
series of swift visions, of glimpses into the very heart
of the nation's agony. He described some of the scenes
that were haunting him and driving him. The winter's
night in the ditches in front of Marye's Heights, when
the dead and dying lay piled in windrows, and the soul
of a people sobbed in despair ! The night on the field
of Gettysburg, when the young soldier lay wounded,
but rapt in his vision, seeing the hosts of the victorious
future defiling upon that hallowed ground ! The ghastly
scenes in Andersonville, and the escape, and the long
journey filled with perils ; and the siege of Petersburg,

414 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and the surrender; and last of all the ecstasy of the
dying man in the capital, when the grim, war-worn
legions were tramping for two days through the city.
Such, wrote Thyrsis, was the book that he wished to
compose, and that was being stifled in him for the lack
of two or three hundred dollars.

Upon the receipt of this letter the philanthropist
wrote again, suggesting that the poet come to see him
and talk things over. He sent the price of a railroad
ticket to Boston; and so Thyrsis made the acquaintance
of a new world — one might almost say of a whole new
system of worlds. ,

For here was the Athens of America, the hub of the
universe. In Boston they worshipped culture, they lived
in literature and art and the transcendental excellences ;
and by the way of showing that there was no snobbery
in them, they opened the gates of their most august
mansions to this soul-sick poet, and invited him to tea.
. Thyrsis got a strange impression among these people,
■who were living upon their knees before the shrine of
their own literary history. One was treading here upon
holy ground; in these very houses had dwelt immortal
writers — their earthly forms had rested in these chairs,
and their auras yet haunted the dim religious light of
these drawing-rooms. There were old people who had
known them in the flesh, and could tell anecdotes about
them — to which one listened in reverent awe ; at every
gathering one met people who were writing biographies
and memoirs of them, or editing their letters and jour-
nals, or writing essays and appreciations, criticisms
and commentaries and catalogs and bibliographies. And
to be worthy of the visitations of such hallowed influ-
ences, one must guard one's mind as a temple, a place
of silences and serenities, to which no vulgar things

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 415

could penetrate; one excluded all the uproar of these
days of undisciplined egotism — above all things else
one preserved an attitude of aloofness from that which
presumed to call itself "literature" in such degenerate
times.

To have become acquainted with these high standards
was perhaps worth the rent of a room and the cost of
some food and clean collars. So Thyrsis reflected when,
after his week of waiting, he had his interview with the
benevolent philanthropist, who explained to him, at
great length, how charity had the effect of weakening
the springs of character, and destroying those quali-
ties of self-reliance and independence which were the
most precious things in a man.

§ 8. It was a curious coincidence, one that seemed
almost symbolic — that Thyrsis should have gone from
the Brahmins of Boston to the Socialists of the East
Side! ^

In one of the publishing-houses he visited, Thyrsis
had met a young man who gave him a Socialist maga-
zine to read ; as the magazine was published in the next
building, Thyrsis went in and met the editor. About
this time they were crowning a new king in England,
and Thyrsis, who had no use for kings, wrote a sar-
castic poem which the Socialist editor published free of
charge. And so the boy discovered a new way in which
he could relieve his feelings.

"I see what you want," he admitted, in his arguments
with this editor; "and it's the same thing as I want —
every man with any sense must see that, in the ultimate
outcome, all this capital will be owned by the public
and not by private individuals. But what I object to
is the way you go at it. The industrial process is a

416 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

necessary thing; it is drilling and disciplining the
workers. They are not yet fitted for the responsibility
of managing the world."

"But," asked the editor, "what's to be the sign when
they are fitted?"

"When they have been educated," Thyrsis answered.

To which the editor responded, "Who is to educate
them, if we don't.?"

That was an interesting point; and Thyrsis found
little by little that a new light was dawning upon him.
He had somehow conceived of industrial evolution as
something vast and intangible and mechanical, some-
thing that went on independent of men, and that could
not be hurried or delayed. What this editor pointed
out was that the process was a definite one, that it went
on in the minds of men, and involved human effort — K)f
which the publishing of Socialist literature was a most
essential part.

"You ought to hear Darrell," said the man ; and a
few days later he wrote Thyrsis a note, asking him to
go to a hall over on the East Side that evening.

Thyrsis went, and found a working-men's meeting-
room, ill-lighted and ill-ventilated, with perhaps two
hundred people in it. The chairman introduced the
speaker of the evening; and so Thyrsis got his first
glimpse of Henry Darrell.

He was something over forty years of age, slight of
build ; his face was pale to the point of ghostliness, and
this impression was heightened by a jet black mustache
and beard. One's first thought was that this man was
no stranger to suff'ering.

He was not a good speaker, in the conventional sense ;
he fumbled for words, and repeated himself — and yet
from his first sentence Thyrsis found himself listening

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 417

spellbound. The voice went through him like the toll
of a beU; never in all his life had he heard a speaker
who put such a burden of anguish into his words —
who gave such a sense of gigantic issues, of age-long
destinies hanging in the balance, of world-embracing
hopes and powers struggling to be born. Here was
a prophet who carried in his soul the future of the race ;
who in the sudden flashes of his vision, in the swift
rushes of his passionate pleadings, evoked from the
deeps of the consciousness forces that one contemplated
with terror — confronted one with martyrdoms and
agonies and despairs.

"Revolution" was his title; he pictured modern civi-
lization as it presented itself to the proletarian man —
a gigantic Moloch, to which human lives were fed, a
monster from whose dominion there was no deliverance,
even in the uttermost parts of the earth. He pictured
accident, disease and death, unemployment and starva-
tion, child-labor, prostitution, war; he was the voice
of the dispossessed of the earth, the man beneath the
machine, ground up body, mind and soul in this "world*-
wide mill of economic might". And he showed how this
man dragged down with him all society ; how the chain
that bound the slave was fastened also to the master —
so that from the poverty and oppression and degrada-
tion of this "downmost man" came all the ulcers that
festered in the social body. He saw the great economic
machine grinding on day and night, the mighty forces
rushing to their culmination. He saw the toiling
millions pressed deeper and deeper into the mire ; he
saw their blind, convulsive struggles for deliverance;
he saw over them the gigantic slave-driver with his
thousand-lashed whip — ^the capitalist state, class-owned
and class-administered — backed by the capitalist church

418 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and the capitalist press and capitalist "public senti-
ment". So the hopes of the people went down in blood,
and reaction sat enthroned. The nations, ridden by
despotisms, and whirled into senseless wars, ran the old
course of militarism, imperialism, barbarism; and so
civilization slid back yet again into the melting-pot !

Thyrsis had never heard such a speech as this in his
life. When it was over, he went up to the platform,
where DarreU sat, looking more exhausted and pain-
driven than ever ; and in a few hesitating words he told
of his interest, and asked for the speaker's address,
that he might write to him. And that night he posted
a letter, introducing himself as a young writer, who
felt impelled to learn more about Darrell's ideas.

In reply came a note from the other, asking him to
dine with him ; and Thyrsis answered accepting.

Then, as chance would have it, he mentioned the cir-
cumstance to his mother. "DarreU!" she cried. "You
don't mean Henry DarreU!"

"Yes," said Thyrsis. "Why.?"
- "And you would meet that man?"
"Why not.?" he asked, perplexed.
"Haven't you read anything about.him in the papers ?
That monster!"

"What do you mean.'"

"A man who deserted his wife and children, and left
them to starve, and ran away with some rich woman !"
Thyrsis recoUected vaguely some sensational head-
lines, about the clergyman and college professor who
had done the shocking things his mother spoke of, and
was now a social outcast, and a preacher of anarchy
and revolution. He recalled also that there had been
a woman, beautiful and richly-dressed, with DarreU at
the meeting.

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 419

The boy was not disturbed by all this, for he had
long ago made up his mind that every man had to work
out his own sex-problems ; in fact, his first impulse was
to admire a man who had had the courage to face the
world upon such an issue. But he was sorry he had
mentioned it to his mother, for she wept bitterly when
she found that he meant to accept the invitation. That
was the culmination of her life's defeat — that her son,
who had been designed for a bishop, should be going to
sit at table with Henry Darrell and his paramour !

§ 9. Thyesis went to the apartment-hotel where
Darrell lived, and was introduced to the beautiful lady
as Mrs. Darrell, and they went down to the dining-
room — where he noticed that everyone turned to stare
at them as they entered. It made him feel that he
must be doing something quite desperate; and yet it
was not easy to imagine any wickedness of the man op-
posite to him — his voice was so kind, and his smile so
gentle, and his whole aspect so appealing. He was
dressed in black, and wore a soft black bow at his
throat, which made still more conspicuous the pallor,
of his face; Thyrsis had never met a man he took to
more quickly — there was something about him that was
like a little child, calling for affection and sympathy.

Yet, also, there was the mind of a thinker. He was
a man of culture, in the most vital sense of the word ;
he had swept the heavens of thought with a powerful
telescope — had travelled, and knew many languages, and
their literatures and arts. He had tested them all by
a strong acid of his own ; so that to talk with him was
to discover the feet of clay of one's idols.

He spoke of Dante and Angelo, who were two of his
heroes ; he told of great experiences among the latter's

420 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

titan frescos. He spoke of Mazzini, whose greatness
as a writer the world had yet to appreciate; he spoke
also of Wagner, whose music he valued less than his
critical and polemical work. He told of modern artists,
both in Germany and Italy — revolutionary forces of
whom Thyrsis had never heard at all. The day must
come, said Darrell, when Americans would discover the
great movements of contemporary thought, and realize
their own provincialness. America thought of itself as
"the land of the free", and that made it hard to teach.
It was obvious enough that there had never been any
real freedom in America — only government by proper-
tied classes. The Revolution had been a rebellion of
country gentlemen and city merchants ; as one might
know from the "constitution" they had adopted — one
of the greatest barriers to human progress ever devised.
And so with the Civil War, which to Darrell was one of
the deeds of the newly-risen monster of Capitalism.

They went upstairs again, and Thyrsis foimd an-
other man seated in the drawing-room. He was intro-
duced by the name of Paret, and Thyrsis recognized
,him as the editor of "The Beacon", a magazine of which
he had chanced upon a copy some time before. It was
the first Socialist publication he had ever seen, and it
had repelled him because its editor had printed his own
picture in a conspicuous place, and also because in his
leading editorial he had dealt flippantly with an eminent
reformer and philanthropist for whom Thyrsis had a
profound respect.

But here was the editor himself — not merely his
photograph : a little man, clad in evening dress, very
neat and dapper. He had a black beard, trimmed to
a point, and also a sarcastic smile, and he impressed
Thyrsis as a drawing-room edition of Mephistopheles.

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 421

He lounged at ease in a big chair, not troubling to
talk ; save that every now and then he would punctuate
the discussion with some droll reflection that stuck in
one's mind like a burr.

Some one spoke of certain evangelists who were con-
ducting a temperance campaign among the workers in
the steel-mills. Said Paret: "If I had to live in hell,
I'm sure I'd rather be drunk than sober !" And a little
later Thyrsis spoke of a novel he had been reading,
which set out to solve the problem of "capital and
labor". Its solution seemed to be for the handsome
young leader of the union to marry the daughter of the
capitalist ; and Paret remarked, with his dry smile, "No
Joubt if the capitalists and their daughters are willing,
the union-leaders will come to the scratch." Again,
Darrell was telling about the ten years' struggle he
had waged to waken the Church to the great issue of
the time; and how at last he had given up in despair.
Paret remarked, "For my part, I never try to talk
economics with preachers. When you talk to a business-
man, he understands a business proposition, and you
can get somewhere ; but when you talk with a preacher,
and you think he's been understanding you, you find
that all the time, he's been thinking what Moses would
have said about it."

There came other guests: a German, hard-fisted,
bullet-headed — editor of an East Side labor-paper.
Some one spoke of working-men losing their votes
through being unemployed and cast adrift ; and Thyrsis
remembered this man's grim comment, "They lose their
votes, but they don't lose their voices !" There came a
young man, fair as an Antinous, who with his verbal
battering-ram shook the institutions of society so as
to frighten even the author of "The Higher Canni-

LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

balism". There came also a poetess, whose work he had
seen in the magazines, and with her a Russian youth
who had come to study the thought of America, and
was now going home, because America had no thought.
Thyrsis had a good deal of patriotism left in him, and
might have been angered by this stripling's contempt ;
but the striphng spoke with such quiet assurance, and
his contempt was so boundless as to frighten one.
"These people," he said — "they simply do not know
what the intellectual life means !"

When Thyrsis went home that evening, he carried
with him new ideas to ponder ; also some of Darrell's
pamphlets and speeches — the product of his ten years'
struggle to make the teachings of Christ of some
authority in the Christian Church. Thyrsis sat up late,
and read one of these pamphlets, an indictment of
Capitalism from the point of view of the artist and
spiritual creator. It was a magnificent piece of writ-
ing; it came to Thyrsis like an echo out of his own
life. So, before he slept that night he had written a
letter to Darrell, telling of his struggles and his de-
feats. "I do not ask you to help me" he wrote. "I
ask you to read my work, and decide if that be worth
saving. For ashamed as I am to say it, I am at the
end of my resources, and if some help does not come, I
do not know what will become of me."

Thyrsis had now tried all varieties of the great and
successful of the earth — the publishers and editors and
authors, the college professors and clergymen, the
statesmen and capitahsts and philanthropists. And
now, for the first time, he tried the Socialists. He
trembled when he opened Darrell's reply. Could it be
that this man would be like all the rest ?

But no, he was different! "Dear Brother:" he wrote.

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 423

"I understand what you have told me, and I appreciate
your position. Send me your manuscripts at once; I
leave to-morrow for a lecture-trip, and on my way I will
read everything, and let you hear from me on my re-
turn. In the meantime, I should add that I am helping
two Socialist publications, and a good many individuals
too, and that my resources have been absurdly exag-
gerated in the public prints. I say this, that you may
not overestimate what I might possibly be able to do."

§ 10. So Thyrsis sent a manuscript of his play, and
a copy of his first novel, and a set of proofs of "The
Hearer of Truth"; and then for a couple of weeks he
waited in suspense and dread. He could not see how a
man Kke Henry DarreU could fail to appreciate his
work ; but on the other hand, after so many disappoint-
ments and rebuffs, how could he bring himself to be-
Keve that any one would really give him aid?

At last came a second letter; a letter full of warm-
hearted sympathy — ^pointing out the faults of imma-
turity in his work, but also recognizing its real merits.
It closed with this all-important sentence: "I will do
what I can to help you, so come and let us talk it
over."

Thyrsis went; and as they sat in his study, Darrell
put his arm about him, and told him a little of his own
career. He had begun life as a street-waif, a newsboy
and bootblack; and once when he was ill, he had gone
to a drug-store for help, and the druggist had given
him a poison by mistake, so that all his life thereafter
he had more sick days than well. He told how, at an
early age, he had gone to a country college to seek
an education as a divinity-student; he had arrived,
weary and footsore, and with his last cent had bought

424 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

a post-card to let his mother know that he was safe.
He told how, as a clergyman and college professor,
the gospel of the time had come to him; how he had
preached and labored, amid persecution and obloquy,
until he had come to realize that the Church was a
dead sepulchre; and how at last he had thrown every-
thing to the winds, and given himself to the working-
class political movement.

Then Thyrsis, scrupulous as ever, said, "I know
nothing about Socialism. I mean to study it; but I
might not come to believe in it — how can I tell.'' I
would not want you to help me under any misappre-
hension."

At which the other smiled gently. "I am working
for the truth," he said.

They talked about Thyrsis and his needs. Presum-
ably, he said, he would have money from his new book
in the fall, but meantime he wanted to take his family
into the country. He could live on thirty dollars a
month; it would be a matter of some two hundred and
fifty dollars. Darrell said he would give him this ; and
Thyrsis sat there, powerless to thank him, his voice
trembling, and a mist of tears in his eyes.

He went on to tell his friend of the work that he
meant to do. Darrell had said that to him the Civil
War was a crime; but Thyrsis did not know what he
meant by that. "I believe in my country!" he said.
"It has tried for high things — and it will come to them !
I know that it can be thrilled and roused, and made to
see the shame into which it is fallen."

Darrell pressed his arm, and answered, with a smile,
"I won't argue with you about the War : you go ahead
and write your book!"

So Thyrsis went home to Corydon, as one who brings

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 425

a reprieve to a prisoner under sentence of death. Such
a deliverance as it was to them ! And such transports
of relief and gratitude as they experienced! He sang
the praises of Darrell, and of the new friends he had
made at Darrell's ; also he brought an invitation for
Corydon to come with him to an evening reception the
next week. They were anxious to meet her, he said;
and Corydon was anxious to go.

But, alas, this did not work out according to expecta-
tions. Thyrsis discovered now what his wife had meant
when she wrote that suffering and humiliation were
breaking down her character. She could not bear to
meet intellectual people, to take part in the competition
of their life. For the most part these were men and
women of intense personalities, absorbed in their own
ideas, keenly critical, and not very merciful to any sort
of weakness. And Corydon was morbidly aware of her
own lack of accomplishments, and acutely sensitive as
to what others thought about her. A strange figure
she must have made in any one's drawing-room — with
the old dress she had fixed up, and the lace-collar she
had borrowed for the occasion, and the sad face with
the large dark eyes. The talk of the company ran to
politics ; and Corydon had nothing to say about politics.
She could only sit in a corner while Thyrsis talked, and
sufiFer agonies of humiliation.

To make matters worse, there came a literary lion
that evening ; one of the few modern writers whose books
Corydon knew and loved. But when they were intro-
duced, he scarcely looked at her; he went on talking
to an East Side poetess whose opinions were fluent and
ready. So Corydon found herself shunted into a cor-
ner with an unknown old lady. It was one of Cory-
don's peculiarities that she abhorred old ladies; and

426 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

this one questioned her about the feeding of infants,
and told her that she was ill-equipped for the responsi-
bilities of motherhood!

On her way home she poured out her bitterness to
Thyrsis. "I can see exactly how it is," she said. "They
all think you've married a pretty face!"

"You haven't given them much chance to think other-
wise," he pleaded.

» "They don't want any chance," she exclaimed.
"They've got it all settled! You are the rising light,
which is to astonish the world — and I'm your youthful
blunder. I stay at home and take care of the baby, and
they all feel sorry for you."

"Do you want them to feel sorry for you?" he
asked.

To which Corydon answered, "I don't want them to
know about me at all. I want to get away, and stay
by myself, and get back my self-respect." And so it
was decided that in a couple of weeks more — ^the first of
April — they would shake the dust of the city from their
feet. They sent for their tent and other goods, and
began inquiring about a place to camp.

§ 11. A FEW days more passed ; and then, one Sun-
day morning, Thyrsis' mother came to him in tears,
with a copy of a newspaper "magazine-supplement" in
her hand.

"Look at this !" she cried ; and Thyrsis stared.

There was a full-page article, with many illustra-
tions, and a headline two inches deep — "Henry Dar-
rell to found Free-Love Colony! Ex-college professor
and clergyman buys farm to teach his doctrines!"
There was a picture of Darrell, standing upon a ladder
and naiUng up an announcement of his defiance to the

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 427

institution of marriage ; and there were pictures of
his wife and child, and of the farm he had bought, and
a long account of the colony which he was organizing,
and in which he meant to preach and practice his ideas
of "free love".

Thyrsis was half dazed. "I don't believe it!" he
cried ; whereat his mother wrung her hands.

"Not believe it!" she exclaimed. "Why, the paper
even gives the price he paid for the place !"

So Thyrsis took the article and went to see Henry
Darrell again ; and there followed one of the most pain-
ful experiences of his life.

He found his friend like a man blasted by a stroke
of lightning. His very physical appearance was
altered; his voice shook and his eyes were wild, and he
paced the room, his whole aspect one cry of agony.

He pointed Thyrsis to a lot of clippings that lay
upon the table — the first editorial comments upon this
new pronouncement. There was one from an evening
paper, which had close upon a million circulation, and
had devoted its whole editorial page to a scathing de-
nunciation, in which it was declared that "Prof. Dar-
rell's morality is that of the higher apes."

"Think of it !" the man cried. "And the thing will
go from one end of the country to the other!"

"But" — gasped Thyrsis, bewildered — "then it is not
true?"

"True.''" cried Darrell. "True.? How can you ask
me?"

"But— the colony ! What is it to be?"

"There is not going to be any colony. I never
dreamed of such a thing!"

"And haven't you bought any farm?"

428 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"My wife bought a farm, over a year ago — ^because
we wanted to live in the country !"

"But then," gasped Thyrsis — "how dare they?"

"They dare anything with me!" cried the other.
"Anything!"

"And have you no redress ?"

"Redress? What redress?"

He went on to tell Thyrsis what had happened. He
and Mrs. Darrell had gone down to the farm to see
about getting it ready, and a woman had come, repre-
senting that she wished to write a magazine article about
"the country-homes of literary Americans". Upon
this pretext she had secured a photograph of the place,
and of Darrell, and of his wife and child. She had
even attempted to secure a photograph of his wife's
aged mother, who lived with her, and who was involved
in the aifair because the money belonged to her. Then
the woman had gone away — and a couple of weeks later
had come this !

"And I thought they were through with us !" Dar-
rell whispered, with a shudder. "I thought it was all
over !"

He sat in a chair, with his face hid in his arms.
Thyrsis put his hand upon his shoulder, and the man
caught it. "Listen," he exclaimed. "You can see this
thing from the outside, you know the literary world.
Do you think that I can ever rise above this? Is there
any use in trying?"

"How do you mean?" Thyrsis asked, perplexed.

"I mean — is it worth while for me to go on writing?
Can I ever have any influence?"

Thyrsis was shocked at the question — as he had been
at the way Darrell took the whole thing. He knew
that his friend had money enough to live comfortably ;

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 429

and why should any sort of criticism matter to a man
who was economically free?

"Brother," he said, "you have forgotten your Dante."

"How do j'ou mean?" asked the other.

"Segui il tuo cor so e lascia dir le gente!" quoted
Thyrsis ; and then he added, "You don't seem to realize
that these are newspapers, and nobody really credits
them."

"Ah, but they do !" cried Darrell. "You don't know
what I have been through with ! My oldest friends have
cut me! Clergymen have refused to sit at table with
me ! The organization that I gave ten years of my life
to founding has gone all to pieces. I have been utterly
ruined — I have been wiped out, destroyed!"

"But, my dear man," Thyrsis argued, "you are set-
ting out to teach a new doctrine, one that is abhorrent
to people. And how can you expect to avoid being at-
tacked? It seems to me that either you ought not to
have done it, or else been prepared for some of this
uproar."

"But because a man becomes a Socialist, are they to
libel him in these foul ways?"

"I don't mean that. It's not only that you are a
Socialist, but that you have defied their marriage-laws."

"But I haven't!" exclaimed Darrell.

"What do you mean?" asked Thyrsis, perplexed.

"I have defied no law — ^nor even any convention. I
have done everything that the world requires."

Thyrsis stared at him, amazed. "Why, surely," he
gasped, "you and — and Mrs. Darrell — you are not
married?"

"Married !" exclaimed the other. "We were married
here in New York, by a regularly-ordained clergyman !"

Thyrsis could not find words to express his dis-

430 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

may. "I — I had no idea of that!" he gasped. "I
thought "

"You see the Hes !" cried the other. "Even yon, had
swallowed them !"

It took Thyrsis some time to adjust himself to this
new point of view. He had thought of his friend as
a man who had boldly defied the convention of marriage ;
and instead of that he was apparently a man cowering
under the lash of the world's undeserved rage. But if
so — what an amazing and incredible thing was the
mesh of slander and falsehood in which he had been
entangled !

§ 12. Little by little Thyrsis drew from Darrell the
story of his marital experience. Before he had been
of age, as a poor student, he had boarded with a woman
many years his senior, who had set out to lure him into
marrying her. "I don't believe that she ever loved me
one hour," he said. "She had made up her mind that
I was a man of brilliant parts, and that I would have
worldly success. To me the thing was like an evil
dream — I couldn't realize it. And I can't tell you about
it now — it was too horrible. She was older than I,
and so different — she was more like a man. And
for twenty years she held me ; I had to stay — I was ut-
terly at her mercy !"

The man's voice fell to a whisper, and he pressed
Thyrsis' hand convulsively ; there were tears upon his
cheeks. "I could not tell it all to anyone," he said.
"It makes me cry like a child to think of it. I'm only
getting oyer it little by little — realizing how I was tor-
tured. This woman had no interest in me, intellectual
or spiritual; she brought up my children to despise me.
I would stay upstairs in my study, writing sermons —

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 431

that was all my life ! For twenty years I waded through
my own blood!"

Darrell paused to get control of himself, and then
went on.

"One of my parishioners was my present wife's
mother. She was one of the old-time abolitionists, and
she was wealthy; and now, in her old age, she saw the
new light, and became a Socialist. ^ This, of course,
was like gall to her family; they were powers in the
state — the railroad people, who control the legislature
and run the government. And so their newspapers de-
nounced me, and denounced the university where I
taught.

"Then came her daughter — a young girl out of col-
lege. I was at their home often, and we became friends.
She saw how unhappy I was, and she tried to open my
wife's eyes, and to win her over to me. But, of course,
she failed in that ; and then, little by little we f oimd that
we loved each other. You know me — you know that I
am not a base man, nor a careless man; and you will
believe me when I tell you that there was nothing be-
tween us that the world could have called wrong. We
knew that we loved, and we knew that there was no
hope. And that went on for eight years ; for eight
years I renounced — and strove with every power of my
heart and soul to make something out of that renuncia-
tion, to transmute it into spiritual power. And I
failed — I could not do it; and in the end I knew the
reason. It was not beauty and nobility — it was mad-
ness and horror ; it was not life — it was death ! The
time came when I knew that our renunciation was. simply
a crime against the soul. Can you see what I mean?"

"Yes," said Thyrsis, "I can see."

"And see what that meant to me — the situation I

432 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

faced! I was a clergyman — and preaching a new cru-
sade to the world. It was like being in a cag«, with
bars of red-hot metal. A hundred times I would go
towards them — and a hundred times I would shrink
back. But I had to grasp them in the end."

"I see!" whispered the other.

"The thing was becoming a scandal anyway; the
world was bound to make a scandal of it, whether we
would or no. It was a scandal that I visited in another
woman's home, it was a scandal that I spent her money
in my propaganda. The very children on the streets
would taunt my children about it. And then, my health
broke down from overwork ; and the mother was going
abroad, and she invited me to go with her and her
daughter; and, of course, that made it worse. So at
last the old lady came to me. 'You love my daughter,'
she said, 'and the world has thrown her into your arms.
You must let a divorce be arranged, and then marry
my daughter.' "

"And you got the divorce yourself?" asked Thyrsis.

"No," said Darrell. "There were grounds enough;
but it would have meant to attack my wife in the public
prints, and I would not do it. I had to let her charge
me with desertion, and say nothing."

"And, of course, they distorted that," said Thyrsis.

"They distorted everything!" cried the other. "My
present wife gave my first wife all her patrimony ; and
I thought that was generous — I thought it was a proof
of love. But the newspapers made it that she had
bought me !"

"And they distorted your second marriage?" asked
Thyrsis.

"They lied about it deliberately," ifras Darrell's reply.
"Some of our friends gave little addresses of greeting;

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 4.33

and so the newspapers called it a new kind of wedding
— a 'Socialist wedding', which we had designed for our
new kind of unions ! And now, when we buy a farm,
so that we can live quietly in the country, they turn
that into a 'free love colony' !"

§ 13. Thyrsis went away from this interview with
some new problems to ponder upon. He had seen a
httle of this power of the newspapers to defile and
torment a man ; but he had never dreamed of anything
as bad as this. This was murderous, this was mon-
strous. He saw these papers now as gigantic engines
of exploitation and oppression — irresponsible, unscrup-
ulous, wanton — turned loose in society to crush and
destroy whom they would.

They had taken this man Darrell and they had poured
out their poisons upon him; they had tortured him
hideously, they had burned him up as with vitriol. As
a public force he was no longer a human being at all —
he was a deformity, a spectre conjured up to bring
fright to the beholder. And through it all he was
utterly helpless — as much at their mercy as an infant
in the hands of savages. And what had he done ? Why
had the torture been visited upon him?

Thyrsis pictured the men who had led in this soul-
hunt. They were supposed to be enlightened Americans
at the dawn of the twentieth century; and did they
truly hold to the superstition of marriage as a religious
sacrament, not to be dissolved by mortal power? Did
they really believe that a man who had once been drawn
into matrimony was obligated for life — no matter how
unhappy he might be, no matter to what indignities he
might be subjected? Or, if they did recognize the
permissibility of divorce — then why this hue and cry

434 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

after Darrell, who had borne his punishment for twenty
years, and had waited for eight or ten years to test
the depths of his new love?

The question answered itself; and the answer
fanned Thyrsis' soul into a blaze of indignation. All
this patter about the deserted wife,*itting at home with
her children and weeping her eyes out — all that was
so much hocus-pocus for the ears of the mob. The
chiefs of this Inquisition and their torturers and slaves
wrote it with their tongues in their cheeks. What they
saw was that they had got securely strapped upon their
rack the man who had threatened their power, who had
laid bare its sources and exposed its iniquity. And
they meant that if ever he came out of their torture-
chamber, it should be so mangled and crippled that
never again would he lift a finger against them !

The gist of the "Darrell case", when you got right
down to it, was a quarrel over property; it was the
snarling of wolves who had been disturbed at their
feeding. Darrell had denounced wealth and the ex-
ploiters of wealth, and now he had married a woman
of wealth ; and was he to get away with his prize? That
was the meaning of all the loud halloo — for that the
hounds were unleashed and the hunting-horns sounded.

Thyrsis pictured the men who "wrote up" the Dar-
rell story. He had known them in the newspaper-world
— the servants of the giant publicity-machine; living
and working in the roar and rush of it, in a stifling at-
mosphere where the finer qualities of the soul were
poisoned and withered over night. They lived their
lives, almost without exception, by means of alcohol and
coflfee and tobacco; they were scornful, disillusioned,
cyirical beyond all telling and all belief. Their only
god in heaven or earth or the waters under the earth

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 435

was "copy". To such men there were two possible
bonds of interest in a woman — the first being lust, and
the second money. In the case of Henry Darrell they
found both these m^^tives ; and so how clear the story
was to them !

Thyrsis thought, also, of the men who owned and
managed the papers ; those who had turned loose the
hunt and directed it. Rich men were they, who had
built these publicity machines for their own purposes.
And what were they in their private lives .^ Some of
them were notoriously dissolute; and still others hid
their ways under a veil of hypocrisy — just as in their
editorials they hid their class-interests under pretenses
of principle. And how easy it would have been for
Darrell to get what he wanted without losing his repu-
tation— if only he had been willing to follow the ex-
ample of these- eminent citizens! Thyrsis knew one
man, the editor of an appallingly respectable journal,
who had invited a young girl to his wife's home and
there attempted to seduce her. He knew the proprietor
of another, whose cheerful custom it was to go about
among his newly-married women-friends and suggest
that, inasmuch as he was a "superman," and their hus-
bands were weaklings, they should let him become in
secret the father of their children. This amateur
eugenist was accustomed to maintain that the great men
in history had for the most part been bastards ; and
Thyrsis, knowing this fact about him, would read edi-
torials in his papers, in which Henry Darrell was de-
nounced as an enemy of the home!

Meantime Thyrsis was reading Darrell's books and
pamphlets, and coming to realize what a mind was here
being destroyed. For this man, it seemed to him, was
master of the noblest prose utterance that had been

436 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

heard in America since Emerson died. He went again
to hear him speak, in another ill-lighted and stuffy hall,
before less than a hundred people ; and the pain of this
was more than he could bear. He went home that night
with his friend, and labored with him with all the force
of his being. "You stay here," he declared, "and put
yourself at the mercy of your enemies ! You waste your
faculties contending with them — even knowing about
them is enough to destroy you. And all the while
you might escape from them altogether — might do your
real work, that the world knows nothing of. No one
can hinder you. And when you h^ve written the book of
your soul, then your tormentors will be — they will be
like the tormentors of Dantp ! Go away ! Go away to
Europe, where you can be free !"

And so before long, he stood upon a steamer-pier and
waved Henry Darrell and his wife farewell. And every
now and then would come letters, telling of long, long
agonies ; for Darrell had to fight for those few rare
days when ill health would permit him to think. So year
by year he labored at what Thyrsis knew, if it was ever
finished, would be America's first world-poem; and in
the meantime eminent statesmen and moralists who were
alarmed at the progress of "Socialist agitation", would
continue to conjure up before the public mind the night-
mare spectre of the once-respected clergyman, who had
deserted his weeping wife and children, and run away
with a rich woman to found a "free-love colony" !

§ 14. A COUPLE of days after the Darrclls sailed,
Thyrsis set out himself to find a home. Oft account
of the new book, he would have to be near a library,
and so he had selected a college-town not far ftom New

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 437

York. He went there now, and put up for a week at a
students' boarding-house, while prosecuting his search.

A strange experience it was to him, after the years
of struggle and contact with the world, to come back
to that academic atmosphere; to find men who were
still peacefully counting up the "feminine endings" in
Shakespeare's verse, and writing elaborate theses upon
the sources of the Spenserian legends. Upon his ex-
cursions into the country some of these young men
would tramp with him — threshing out, student-fashion,
the problems of the universe; and how staggering it
was to meet a man who was about to receive a master's
degree in literature — and who regarded Arthur Hugh
dough as a "dangerous" poet, and Tennyson's "Two
Voices" as containing vital thought, and T. H. Green as
the world's leading philosopher ! And this was the "edu-
cation" that was dispensed at America's most aristo-
cratic university — for this many millions of dollars had
been contributed, and scores of magnificent buildings
erected !

Thyrsis saw that a partial explanation lay in the
fact that in connection with the university there existed
a great theological seminary. Some of these future
ministers came also to the boarding-house, and Thyrsis
listened to their shop-talk — about the difference be-
tween "transubstantiation" and "consubstantiation",
and the status of the controversy over the St. John
Gospel. He heard one man cite arguments from Paley's
"Moral Philosophy" ; and another making bold to state
that he was uncertain about the verbal inspiration of
the Pentateuch !

To Thyrsis, as he listened to these discussions, it
was as if he felt a black shadow stealing across his
soul. He wondered why he should hate these men with

438 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

a personal hatred; he tried to argue with himself that
they must be well-meaning and earnest. The truth was
that they seemed to him just like the law-students, men
moved by sordid and low ideals ; the only difference was
that their minds were not so keen -as the lawyers'.
Thyrsis was coming little by little to understand the
economic causes of things, and he perceived that this
theological world represented a stagnant place in the
stream of national culture ; it being a subsidized world,
maintained half by charity, vital men turned from it;
it drew to itself the feebler minds, or such as wished
to live at ease, and not inquire top closely into the
difference between truth and falsehood.

§ 15. A FEW miles out from the town Thyrsis found
a farm with an abundance of wild woodland, where the
farmer gave him permission to camp. And so he went
back and got some lumber, and loaded his tent and sup-
plies on a wagon, and wrote Corydon that he would
meet her the next afternoon. With the help of the
farmer's boy he labored the rest of the day at building
the platform, and putting up the tent, and getting
their belongings in order. The next day he was up at
dawn, constructing tables and stands ; and later on he
hired the farmer's "j agger-wagon", and drove in for
Corydon and Cedric and the trunks.

It was a glorious spring day, of turquoise sky and
glinting sunshine ; and later, when the sun was low, the
woods were flushed with a glow of scarlet and purple.
It lent a glory to the scene, shedding a halo about the
commonest tasks ; the unpacking of blanlcets and dishes,
the ranging of groceries upon shelves. They were free
from all the world at last — they were setting out upon
the journey of their lives together !

THE TORTURE-HOUSE 439

So it was with singing and laughter that they went
at their work. The baby crawled about on the tent-
floor and got into everybody's way, and crowed with
delight at the novel surroundings ; and later on his
mother gave him his supper and put him to bed; and
then she spread a feast of bread and butter, and fresh
milk and eggs and a can of fruit, and they sat down to
the first meal they had eaten together in many a long,
long month.

They were tired and ravenously hungry; but their
happiness of soul was keener even than any physical
sensation, and they sat leaning upon their elbows and
gazing across the table, reading the wonder in each
other's eyes.

"It has been a year since we parted !" whispered Cory-
don.

"Just a year !" he said. "It seems like ten of them."

"And do you remember, Thyrsis, how we prayed!
How we prayed for this very hour!"

He took her hands in his. Once more they renewed
their pledges of devotion ; once more the vision of their
hopes unrolled before them. "From now on," he whis-
pered, "our life is our own ! We can make it whatever
we will. Let us make it something beautiful."

And so there they made a compact. They would
speak no more of the year that was past ; it was a bad
dream, and now it was gone. Let it be swept from their
thoughts, and let them go on to make the future what
they desired it to be.

Book XII
THE TREADMILL

They sat m the little cabin, where she had been read-
ing some limes from the poem again —

"0 easy access to the hearer's grace

When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!"

"Ah, yes!" he said. "But our lot was cast in a dif-
ferent time."

She put her hand upon his. "Even so," she said;
and then turned the page, and read once more —

"What though the music of thy rustic flute
Kept not for long its happy, country tone;
Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note
Of men contention-tost, of men who groan.

Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tired thy
throat —
It failed, and thou wast mute!
Yet hadst thou always visions of our light!"

§ 1. 1 he mise-en-scene of their new adventure in
domesticity was a tent eighteen feet by twelve ; but as
the side-walls were low, they could walk only in the
centre, and must range their belongings at the sides.
To the left, as one entered the tent, there stood a soap-
box with a tiny oil-stove upon it; and then a stand,
made out of a packing-box, to hold their dishes, their
cooking-utensils and their limited supply of provisions.
Next down the line came g, trunk, and in the corner the
baby's crib — which had been outgrown by the farmer's
children, and purchased by Thyrsis for a dollar. At
the rear was a folding-table, and above it a board from
which Corydon hung her clothing ; along the other wall
were her canvas cot, and a Httle stand with some books,
and a wash-stand and another trunk.

Some distance off in, the woods stood a second tent,
seven feet square, in which Thyrsis had a cot for him-
self, and also a canvas-chair in which he .sat to receive
the visits of his muse. They got their drinking water
from a spring near by; there was a tiny stream beside
the tent which provided their washing-water. In this
stream Thyrsis hollowed out a flat basin, in which they
might set their butter-crock, and a pail of milk, and a
larger pail that held their meat. Below that was a
deeper pool from which they dipped water, and lower
yet a third pool, with a board on which Corydon might
sit and wash diapers, to her heart's content and her
back's exhaustion.

The tent had been old when Thyrsis got it, and as
443

444. LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

this was the third season he had used it, it was dark and
dun of hue. They had not noticed this at the outset,
as they had put it up on a bright, sunshiny day, and
also before the trees had put out all their foliage. But
now, when rain came, they found that they had to light
a lamp in order to read in the tent ; and, of course, it
was on rainy days that they had to be inside. Thyrsis
did not realize the influence which this tent had upon
his wife's spirits ; it was only after he saw Tier made
physically ill by having to live in a room with yellow
wall-paper, that he came to understand the power which
her surroundings had over Corydon.

If they 'so much as touched a finger- to the roof of
the tent while it was raining, a steady dripping would
come through at that point. Then, as the rains grew
heavier, water took to running down the pole that stood
in the centre of the tent, and formed a pool in the middle
of the floor, so that Thyrsis had to get the axe and cut
a hole there. And, of course, there was no way to dry
anything; the woods, which were low, were turned into
a swamp, and one's shoes became caked with mud, and
there was no keeping the tent-floor clean.

In this place they had to keep an able-bodied, year-
and-a-half-old baby! There was "ho -other place to
keep him. He could not be allowed on the damp floor,
nor where he could touch the top of the tent ; so Thyrsis
set up sticks at all four corners of his crib, and tied
strong twine about them, making a little pen ; and
therein they put the baby, and therein he had to stay.
He had his rattle and his rubber-doll and his blocks and
the rest of his gim-cracks; and after he had howled
long enough to satisfy himself that there was no de-
liverance from his prison, he settled back and accepted
his tragic fate. There came occasions when Corydon

THE TREADMILL 445

was sick, and unable to move; then Thyrsis would put
up his umbrella and take Cedric to his own tent, where
he would draw a chalk-line across the floor. One-half
of the forty-nine square feet of space was his, and in
it he would sit and read and study ; in the other half
the baby would play. After long experience he came
to realize that at such times Papa would not pay any
attention to him, and that crossing the chalk-line in-
volved getting one's "mungies" spanked.

There were other troubles that fell upon them. At
first, it being April, it was cold at night ; and they had
no stove, and no room for a stove. Later on the
ceaseless rains brought a plague of mosquitoes ; and so
Thyrsis had to rig up a triangular door and cover
the entrance to the tent with netting; and when the
weather grew better, he had to get more netting and
construct a little house, in which the baby could play
outdoors.. And then there had to be more spankings
of "mungies", to teach the infant that this mysterious
mosquito-bar must not be walked through, nor pulled
at, nor poked with sticks, nor even eaten.

They prayed for fair days, and a little sunshine ; and
it seemed as if the weather-demons had discovered this,
and were playing with them. There would come a
bright morning, and they would spread a rug in the
baby's cage, and hang out all their damp belongings
to dry ; and then would come a sudden shower,
and baby and rug and belongings would all
have to pile back into the tent. And then it
would clear again, and everything would go out once
more; and they would prepare dinner, and be com-
fortably settled to eat, when it would begin to sprinkle
again. They would move in the clothing and the baby,
and when it began to rain harder, they would move in

446 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

the table and the food; and forthwith the rain would
cease. Because it was poor fun eating in a dark tent
by lamp-light, amid the odor of gas-stove and cooking,
they might move out once more — ^but only to repeat the
same experience over again.

For six weeks after their arrival there was not a day
without rain, and it would rain sometimes for half a
week without ceasing. So everything they owned be-
came damp and mouldy — all their clothing, their food,
the very beds upon which they slept. One of their
miseries was the lack of place to keep things ; all their
odds and ends had to be stowed away under the cots
— where one might find clothing, and books, and manu-
scripts, and a hammock, and an umbrella, and some
shoes, and a box of prunes, and a sack of potatoes,
and half a ham. When water got in at the sides of the
tent and wet all these objects, and the bedclothing hung
over the floor and got into them, it was trying to the
temper to have to rummage there.

■§ 2. Before she left the city Corydon had taken the
baby to consult a famous "child-specialist" — at five dol-
lars per consultation ; she had received the dreadful tid-
ings that Cedric was threatened with the "rickets".
So she had come out to the' country with one mighty
purpose in her soul. "Under-nourishment", the doctor
had said ; and he had laid out a regular schedule. Six
times daily the unhappy infant was to be fed ; and each
time some elaborate concoction had to be got ready —
practically nothing could be eaten in a state of nature.
The first meal would consist of, say a poached egg on
a piece of toast, and the juice of an orange, with the
seeds carefully excluded ; the next of some chicken
broth with a cracker or two, and the pulp of prunes

THE TREADMILL 447

with the skins removed; the next of some beef chopped
up and pounded to a pulp and broiled, together with
a bit of mashed potato or some other cooked vegetable ;
the next of some gruel, with cream and sugar, and
some more prunes.

And these operations, of course, took the greater
part of Corydon's day ; she would struggle at them
until she was ready to drop, and when she had to give
up they would fall to Thyrsis. Some of them fell to
him quite frequently — for instance, the pounding of
the meat. It had to have all the fat and gristle care-
fully cut out; and there had to be a clean board, and
a clean hammer, both of which must be scraped and
washed afterwards ; and whenever by any chance Cory-
don let the meat stay on the fire a second too long,
so that it got hard, the whole elaborate operation had
to be gone over again — was not the baby's life at stake?

It was quite vain for him to protest as to the pains
that Corydon took to remove every tiniest fragment of
the skin of a stewed prune. "Surely, dearest," he
would argue, "the internal arrangements of a baby are
not so delicate as to be torn by a tiny bit of prune-
skin!"

But to Corydon the internal arrangements of babies
were mysterious things — to be understood only by a
child-specialist at five dollars per visit. "He told me
what to do," she would say ; "and I am going to do it."

So she would prepare the concoctions, and would sit
and feed them to the baby, spoonful by spoonful; and
long after the little one had been stuffed to the burst-
ing-point, she would hold the spoon poised in front of
its mouth, making tentative passes, and seeking by some
device to cajole the mouth into opening and admitting
one last morsel of the precious nutriment. The child

448 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

had a word of its own inventing, wherewith it denoted
things that were good to eat. "Hee, gubum, gubum!"
he would exclaim; and Corydon would hold the spoon
and repeat "Gubum, gubum," — ^long after the baby had
begun to sputter and gasp and make plain that it was
no longer "gubum".

Also, under the instructions of the specialist, they
made an attempt to break the child of the "hoodaloo
mungie" habit. A baby should lie down and go to
sleep without handling, the authority had declared;
and now that there was all outdoors for him to cry in,
they resolved that he should be taught. So they built
up the fence about the crib, and laid the baby in for his
afternoon nap, and started to go away. And the baby
gave one look of perplexity and dismay, and then be-
gan to cry. By the time they had got out of the tent
he was screaming like a creature possessed; and Cory-
don and Thyrsis sat outside and stared at each other
in wonder and alarm. When she could stand it no more,
they went away to a distance ; but still the uproar went
on. Now and then they would creep back and peep in
at the purple and choking infant; and then steal away
again, and discuss the phenomenon, and wish that the
*'child-specialist" were there to advise them. Finally,
when the crying had gone on for two hours without a
moment's pause, they gave up, because they were afraid
the baby might cry itself into convulsions. And so
the "hoodaloo mungie" habit went on for some time
yet.

Under the "stuffing regime" the infant at first thrived
amazingly; he became fat and rosy, and Corydon's
heart beat high with joy and pride. But then came
midsummer, and the hot season ; and first of all a rash
broke out upon the precious body, and in spite of

THE TREADMILL 449

powders and ointments, refused to go away. Later on
came the "hives", with which the baby was spotted like
the top of a pepper-crust. And then, as fate willed it,
the family of a woman who did some laundry for Cory-
don developed the measles; and Corydon found it out
too late — and so they were in for the first of a long
program of "children's diseases".

It was a siege that lasted for a month and more — a
nightmare experience. The child had to be kept in a
dark place, under pain of losing its eyesight ; and when
it was very hot in the tent, some one had to sit and fan
it. It could not sleep, but writhed and moaned, now
screaming in torment, now whimpering like a frightened
cur — a sound that wrung Thyrsis' very heart. And
oh, the sight of the little body — purple, a mass of erup-
tions, and with beads of perspiration upon it! Cory-
don's mother came to help her through this ordeal, and
would sit for hours upon hours, rocking the wailing
infant in her arms.

§ 3. But there were ups as well as downs in this
tenting adventure. There came glorious days, when
they took long tramps over the hills ; or when Thyrsis
would carry the child upon his shoulder, and they would
wander about the meadows, picking daisies and clover,
and making garlands for Corydon. Once Cedric sat
down upon a bumble-bee, and that was hard upon him,
and perhaps upon the bee. But for the most part the
little one was enraptured during these excursions. He
was fascinated with the flowers, and continually seeking
for an opportunity to devour some of them; while he
was doing it he would wear such a roguish smile — it was
impossible not to believe that he understood the agi-
tation which these abnormal appetites occasioned in his

450 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

parents. Corydon would be seized with a sudden access
of affection, and she would clutch him in her arms and
squeeze him, and fairly smother him with kisses. Of
course the youngster would protest wildly at this, and
so not infrequently the demonstration would end tragi-
cally.

"I can't have any joy in my baby at all!" she would
lament ; and Thyrsis would have to soothe the child, and
plead with her to find more practical ways of demon-
strating her maternal devotion.

Cedric was beginning to make determined efforts to
talk now, and he had the most original names for things.
His parents would adopt these into their own speech,
which thus departed rapidly from established usage.
They had to bring themselves to realize that if they
went on in that fashion, the child would never learn to
speak so that any one else could understand him. The
grandmothers were most strenuous upon this point, and
would laboriously explain to the infant that chickens
and pigeons and sparrows were not all known as "ducky-
ducks" ; they would plead with it to say "bottle of milk",
while its reckless parents were delighting themselves
with such perversions as "bobbu mookie-mook."

Two or three times each week the farmer would bring
their mail; and once a week they would hire an old
scare-crow of a horse, and a buggy which might have
passed for the one-horse shay in its ninety-ninth year,
and drive to a town for provisions. It was amazing
what loads of provisions a family of three could con-
sume in the course of a week — especially when one of
them was following the "stuffing regime". There had
to be a lot of figuring done to get it for the sum of
thirty dollars a month ; and this put another grievous
burden upon Thyrsis. Corydon, alas, had no talents

THE TREADMILL 451

for figuring, and was cursed with a weakness for such
superfluities as clean laundry and coffee with cream.
This was one more aspect of the difl'erence between the
Hebrew and the Greek temperament ; and sometimes the
Hebrew temperament would lose its temper, and the
Greek temperament would take to tears. The situation
was all the more complicated because of their pitiful
ignorance. They really did not know what was neces-
sity and what was luxury. For instance, Thyrsis had
read somewhere that people could live without meat ; but
Corydon had never heard of such an idea, and insisted
with vehemence that it was an absurdity.

However, there was no evading the issue of poverty ;
for the thirty dollars was all they had. "The Hearer
of Truth" had been out several months now, and had
not sold a thousand copies ; and so it was to be doubted
if Thyrsis would ever get another dollar from that.
Also, he had heard from the translator of "The Genius",
and had agreed to accept twenty-five dollars as an
"honorarium" for the production of his play in Ger-
many— this princely sum to be paid when the play
came out during the following winter.

Meantime, of course, he was driving away at his new
work. Domestic duties took up most of his morning;
but he would get away into the woods in the after-
noons, and in the evenings, when the family was asleep,
he would work until far after midnight. He was bring-
ing out basketfuls of books from the library of the
university; and he lived another life in these — sharing,
in a hundred diflFerent forms, the agony of the War.
He was not writing yet ; he was filling up his soul
with the thing, making it a reservoir of impressions.
Some times it would seem that the reservoir was nearly
full, and he would be seized with a hunger to be at

462 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

work; he would go about possessed by it — absent-
minded, restless, nervous when he was spoken to. It was
hard for a man who listened all night to the death-
groans of the thousands piled up before "Bloody
Angle", to get up in the morning and be satisfactory
in the role of "mother's assistant".

Here again was the torment of this matrimonial bond
to a man who wished to be an artist. He had to live two
lives, when one was more than he could attend to; he
had to be always aware of another soul yearning for
him, reaching out to him and craving his attention.
To be sure, Corydon was interested in what he was
doing; she even made heroic efforts to read the books
that he was reading. But she had so many duties, and
so many headaches ; and when night came she was so
tired ! She would ask him to tell her about his vision ;
and was not the thing untellable.'' Why else did he
have to labor day and night, like a man possessed.'' He
would explain this to her, and she would bid him go
on and do his work and not mind her. But when he
would take her at her word, and there would follow a
week or two of indifference and preoccupation — then
he would discover that she was again unhappy.

§ 4. This never ceased to be the case between them ;
but perhaps it was intensified at this time by the fact
that their sex-life had to be suppressed. This was
a problem which they had talked out between them be-
fore they came away. Thyrsis, who was groping for
the truth about these matters, had come to the con-
clusion that the factor which gave dignity and mean-
ing to intercourse between a man and woman was the
desire, or at any rate the willingness, to create a child.
Corydon was not sure that she agreed with him in this ;

THE TREADMILL 458

but so far as their own case was concerned, it was quite
clear that they could take no remotest chance of any
accident — another child would mean certain destruction
for all three of them. And so they had gone back to
the "brother and sister" arrangement with which they
had begun life. This was a simple matter for Thyrsis,
who was utterly wrapped up in his book; it was not
so simple for Corydon, though neither of them realized
it, nor could have been brought to admit it. As usual,
Corydon desired to be what he was, and to feel what
he felt ; and so Thyrsis did not realize how another side
of her was being blighted. Hers was predominantly a
love-nature; it was intolerable to her that any one she
loved should not love her in return, and love her in the
same way, and to the same extent ; and now, when her
entire being went out to him, she found herself obliged
to suppress her emotions.

Sometimes the thing would break out in spite of her.

"Thyrsis," she would cry, "aren't you going to kiss
me good-night.''"

"Didn't I kiss you, dearest.?" he would answer.

"Oh, but such a cold and perfunctory kiss !"

And so he would come and put his arms about her;
but even while she held him thus, she would feel the
life go out of his caresses, and see his eyes with a far-
off expression. She would know that his thoughts were
away upon some battle-field.

"Tell me, Thyrsis," she would exclaim. "Do you
really love me?"

"Yes, dear," he would reply. "I love you."

"But how much do you love me ?"

And then he would be dumb. What a question to
ask him ! As if he had the time and the energy to climb
to those heights, to speak again that difficult language !

454 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Had he not told her a thousand times how much he
loved her! and could she not believe it and understand
it?

"But why should it be so hard to tell me?" she would
protest.

And he would answer that to him it was a denial of
love to explain or to make promises. He was as un-
changeable as the laws of nature — ^he could no more
be faithless to her soul than he could to his own.

"I want you to take that for granted," he would say ;
"to know it as you know that the sun will rise to-mor-
row morning."

"But, Thyrsis," she would answer, when he used this
metaphor, "don't people sometimes like to go out and
see the sun rise?"

§ 5. The summer passed ; and Thyrsis found to his
dismay that his relentless muse had not yet permitted
him to write a word. He had not a sufficient grasp
upon his mighty subject — ^nor for that matter had he
freedom to get by himself and wrestle it out. He
shrunk from that death-grapple, while they were in this
unsettled state. They could not stay in tents through
the winter-time; and where were they to go?

Thyrsis was consumed with the desire to build a tiny
house in these woods. He had roamed the country
over, without finding any place that was habitable ; and
besides, he did not want to pay rent — he wanted a
home of his own, however humble. He had meant to
build one with the money from "The Hearer of Truth" ;
but now there came a statement from the publisher,
showing that there would be due him on the book a
trifle over eleven dollars!

He tried a new plan. He wrote out a "scenario" of

THE TREADMILL 455

his projected novel, and sent this to his publisher, to
see if he could get a contract in advance. He asked
for five hundred dollars — with that he could build the
house he wanted, and live for another six months, luitil
the book was done. The publisher wrote him to come to
the city, where, after some parleying, he submitted a
proposition ; he would advance the money and publish
the book, paying ten per cent, royalty; but he must
also have the option to publish the author's future
writings for ten years upon the same basis.

This rather staggered Thyrsis. He was business-
man enough by this time to realize that if he ever had
a real success he could get fifteen or twenty per cent,
upon his future work — there were even some authors
who got twenty-five per cent. And moreover, he did
not like to tie himself to this publisher, who was of the
hard and grasping type. He went home to think it
over, and in the end he wrote to Henry DarreU. He set
forth the situation, and showed how much money it
might mean to him — ^money which he would otherwise
be able to devote to some useful purpose. It all de-
pended upon what Darrell could do in the emergency.

He waited three weeks, and then came Darrell's reply,
saying that he could not possibly do what Thyrsis
wished. There were so many calls upon him — ^the So-
cialist paper was in trouble, and so on. Thereupon
Thyrsis wrote to the publisher to say that he accepted
the oflFer and would sign the contract; but in a couple
of days he received a curt reply, to the effect that the
publisher had changed his mind, and no longer cared to
consider the arrangement. He had, as Thyrsis found
afterwards, got rid of the enthusiastic young man who
had inveigled him into "The Hearer of Truth"; and

466 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

perhaps also he had been reading the ridicule which the
critics were pouring out upon that unhappy book.

So once more Thyrsis wrote to Darrell — a letter of
agonized entreaty. He was at the most critical moment
of his life; and now, at the very culmination of his ef-
fort, to have to give up would be a calamity he could
simply not contemplate. If only he could finish the
task, he would be saved ; for this was a book that would
grip men and shake them — that it should fail was simply
unthinkable. He could make out with two hundred dol-
lars ; and he besought his friend at any sacrifice to stand
by him. He asked him to cable ; and when, a couple of
weeks later, the message came — "all right" — to Thyrsis
it was like waking up and escaping from the grip of
some terrible dream.

§ 6. And so began the house-building. It was high
time, too — the latter part of September, and the nights
were growing chill. He sought out a carpenter to help
him, and had an interview with his friend the farmer,
who agreed to rent a bit of land, in a corner of his
orchard, by the edge of the wood. It was imder the
shade of a great elm-tree, and sufficiently remote from
all the world to satisfy the taste of any literary hermit.

For months before this he and Corydon had dis-
cussed the plans of their future home; every square
inch of it had been a subject of debate. In its archi-
tectural style it was a compromise between Corydon's
aesthetic yearnings, and the rigid standards of economy
which circumstance imposed. It was to be eighteen
feet long and sixteen feet wide — six feet high at the
sides and nine in the centre. It was to be "weather-
boarded", and roofed with paper, instead of shingles —
this being so much cheaper. Corydon heard with dis-

THE TREADMILL 457

may that it would be necessary to paint this roofing-
paper black; and Thyrsis, by way of compensation,
agreed that the weather-boards should have some
"natural finish", instead of common paint. There was
to be a six-foot piazza in front, and a little platform in
back,, with steps descending to the spring.

There had been long discussions about the method
of heating the mansion. Corydon had been observing
the customs of her neighbors in this typical "small-
fanning" district, and declared that they had two lead-
ing characteristics : first, they were not happy until
they had had all their own teeth extracted, and a com-
plete set of "store-teeth" substituted; and second, as
soon as they moved into a house, they boarded over the
open fire-place and covered the boards with wall-paper.
But Thyrsis, making investigations along practical
lines, found that the open fire-place had a bad reputa-
tion as a constmner of fuel; and also, it would take a
mason to build a chimney, and the wages of masons were
high. So Corydon had to reconcile herself to a house
with a stove, and a stove-pipe that went through a hole
in the wall!

Nevertheless this house-buUding time was one of the
happiest periods of their lives. For here was something
constructive, in which they could both be occupied.
Thyrsis would be up and at work early in the morn-
ing, before the carpenter came; and in between the
baby's various meals, Corydon would come also, and
take part in the operations. A miraculous thing it
was to see the house of their dreams coming into be-
ing, with every feature just as they had planned it.
And what a palatial structure it was — ^with so much
space and air! One could actually move about in it
without danger of striking one's head ; coming into it

458 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

from the tent, one felt as if he were entering a
cathedral !

They were so consumed with a desire to see it finished,
that Thyrsis would stay at the work until darkness
came upon him, and sometimes even worked by moon-
light, or with a lantern. And how proud they would
be when the carpenter came next morning, and found
the last roof-boards laid, or the flooring all completed!
Thyrsis learned the mysteries of window-sills and door-
frames, the excitements of "weather-boarding," and the
perils of roof-painting. He realized with wonder how
many achievements of civilization the privileged classes
take as a matter of course. What a remarkable thing
it was, when one came to think of it, that a door should
swing true upon its hinges, and fit exactly into its
frame, and latch with a precise and soul-satisfying
snap! And that windows should slide up and down
in their frames, and stop at certain places with a spring-
catch !

Corydon too was interested in these discoveries, and
became skilled at holding weather-boards while her hus-
band nailed them, and at helping to unroll and measure
roofing-paper, and climbing up the ladder and holding
it in place. Even the baby became fired with the spirit
of achievement, and would get himself a hammer and a
board, and plague his parents until they started a
dozen or so of nails for him — after which he would sit
and blissfully poiuid them into the board, and all but
pound them through the board in his enthusiasm. Be-
fore long he even learned to start them himself; and
a most diverting sight it was to see this twenty-two-
months old youngster driving nails like an infant Her-
cules. For the fastening of the roofing-paper they used
little circular plates of tin called "cotterels" ; and these

THE TREADMILL 459

also Cedric must learn to use. So a new phrase was
added to the vocabulary of "dam-fool talk". "Bongie
cowtoos" was the name of the operation; for a couple
of years thereafter, whenever Corydon and Thyrsis
wished to be let alone to discuss the problems of the
universe, they would get the baby a hammer and some
nails and a board, and repeat that magic formula, and
the problem was solved.

Unfortunately, however, it was not all smooth sailing
in the carpentry-business. There were mashed thumbs
and sawed fingers ; and then, in an evil hour, Thyrsis
came upon an advertisement which told of a wonderful
new kind of wall-paper which could be applied directly
to laths — thus enabling one to dispense with plaster.
He sent for ten or twelve dollars' worth of this ma-
terial, and he and Corydon spent a whole morning mak-
ing a mixture of glue and flour-paste and water, and
boiling it in an iron preserving-kettle. But alas, the
paper would not paste; and then they had a painful
time. Corydon gave up in disgust, and went away;
but Thyrsis, to whom economy was a kind of disease,
would not give up, and was angry with the other for
urging him to give up. He spent a whole day wrestling
with the concoction, and gave himself a headache with
the ghastly odor. But in the end he had to dump it
out, and clean the kettle, and fasten the paper to the
lathes with "bongie cowtoos". As the strips of paper
did not correspond with the studding, he found himself
driving nails into springy laths, an operation most
trying to the temper of any man of letters. One of
the trials of this house forever after was that upon the
least jar a corner of the ceiling was liable to fall loose ;
and then one would have to get a ladder, and climb up
into a hot region, and pound nails into a broken lath.

460 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

with dust sifting down into one's eyes, and the hammer
hitting one's sore thumb, and occasioning exclamations
not at all suitable for the ears of a two-year-old in-
telligence.

§ 7. When the doors were fitted, and the windows
set in, and the piazza laid, and the steps built, they
got down to the furniture, which was also to be home-
made. Thyrsis was gratified beyond telling by these
tables and dressing-stands and shelves and book-cases,
which he could build of hemlock boards in an hour or
two, and which cost only thirty or forty cents apiece.
He would labor with Corydon to induce her to share
this joy; but alas, he would only succeed in losing his
own joy, without increasing hers. On many occasions
he attempted such things as this ; it was only after long
years that he came to realize that Corydon's tempera-
ment was the one fixed fact in the universe with which
he had to deal.

, Two hundred and twenty-five dollars was the total
cost of this establishment when completed. And while
the carpenter was putting the finishing touches, Thyrsis
was using up thirty dollars more of lumber in construct-
ing himself a "study" in the woods near by. Eight by
ten this cabin was to be; it was to have a door and a
window, and a little piazza in front, upon which the in-
habitant might sit in fair weather. Also Thyrsis built
for it a table and a bookcase ; and as he had now eighty
square feet instead of forty-nine, there was room for
a cot and a chair, and a coal-stove fourteen inches in
diameter. As fate would have it, there was some black
paint left over; and to Corydon's horror it was an-
nounced that this would be used on the study. How-
ever, Thyrsis insisted that it was his study ; and be-

THE TREADMILL 461

sides, there was some red paint left, with which he
might decorate the window and the door-frame, and
stripe the edges of the roof and the corners. Surely
that would be festivity enough for the most exacting
of Greek temperaments !

Then came the rapturous experience of moving into
these new mansions. The joy of having shelves to put
things on, and hooks to hang things from. Of being able
to take books and manuscripts out of their trunks, and
not pile them under their beds. Of carrying over their
belongings, and having everything fit into the place that
had been made for it !

Thyrsis purchased an old stove, and also a kitchen-
range from a neighbor ; he sank a barrel in the spring,
and walled it round with cement ; he built a stand in the
kitchen, and set up a sink and a little pump.

This was the time of year when there were held at
various places in the country what the neighbors called
"vandews". He and Corydon found it diverting to get
the scarecrow nag and the one-horse shay, and drive
to some farm-house, where one might see the history of
a family for the last fifty years spread out upon the
lawn. They would stand round in the cold and snow
while the auctioneer disposed of the horses and cows and
hay and machinery, waiting until he came to the house-
hold objects upon which they had set their eye. So
they would invest in some stove-pipe, and a couple of
ghastly chromos (for the sake of the frames), and
some odds and ends of crockery, and a spade, and some
old rope to make a swing for the baby. They would
get these things for five or ten cents each, and get in
addition all the excitements of the bargain-hunt.

Once they had a real adventure — they came upon a
wonderful old "grandfather's clock", about six feet

462 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

high ; and Corydon exclaimed in rapture, "Oh Thyrsis,
I'd be happy for the rest of my hfe if we could have that
clock!" On such terms it appeared to Thyrsis that
the clock might be worth making a sacrifice for, and he
got up the courage to declare that he would oifer as
high as five dollars for it. And so they stood, trembling
with excitement, and waiting.

"Don't lose it, even if it's as high as six dollars!"
whispered Corydon ; but alas, the first bid for the clock
was twenty-five dollars. They stood staring with dis-
may, until the treasure was sold to a dealer from the
city for the incredible sum of eighty-seven dollars ; and
then they drove home, quite awe-stricken by this sud-
den intrusion from the world of luxury outside their
ken.

§ 8. However, this disappointment did not trouble
them for long; there were too many luxuries in their
own home. Not very long after it was finished, there
fell a deluge of rain ; and what a delight it was to listen
to it, and know that they were safe from it! That
not only did they have a dry roof over their head —
but they were able to move about, and to reach up
their hands without peril, and to sit down and read
without a lamp ! They would stand by the window
with their arms about each other, watching the rain
beating upon the fields, and dripping from the elm
tree, and flowing in torrents past the house ; they would
listen to it pounding overhead and streaming off the
roof before their faces. They were dry, quite dry !
All their belongings were dry — their shoes jvere not
mildewing, their books were not getting soft and shape-
less, their bed-clothing would be all right when night
came!

THE TREADMILL 463

The down-pour lasted for three whole days, yet they
enjoyed it all. It proved to be a memorable rain to
Corydon, for it brought to her a great occasion — the
beginning of her poetical career. It happened late one
night, when, as usual, the cry of "hoodaloo mungie"
awakened her from a sound slumber. The day had been
a particularly hard one, and the heaviness of exhaus-
tion was upon her. For a moment she stared up into
the darkness, listening to the rain close above her, and
trying to nerve herself to put out her arm in the cold.
She shuddered at the thought; there came to her a
perfectly definite impulse of hatred — hatred of the
child, of its noise and its demands. She had felt it
before — sometimes as a dull, cold dislike, sometimes as
something passionate. Why should she have to sacrifice
herself to this insatiable creature, whom she did not
love.? What did it matter to her if other women loved
their children? She had wanted life — and was this life?
At that moment the cry of "hoodaloo-mungie" sym-
bolized for her all the sordid cares and nervous agony
of her existence.

And suddenly, unexpectedly, a daring impulse seized
her. "No!" she thought, and set her teeth— "I'll let
him cry ! I'U cure him of this — and I'll do it to-night !"
So she turned and told Cedric to go to sleep ; at which,
of course, the child began to scream.

Corydon lay very still in the dark, her eyes wide and
every nerve tense. She could not feel, she could not.
think; it seemed as though she were deprived of every
sense except that of hearing ; and in her, through her,
and around her rang a senseless din, piercing, intense,
increasing in volume every minute, and completely
drowning out the beating of the rain.

"Can I stand it?" she thought. "Or will his lungs

464 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

burst? And yet, I must, I must — this can't go on for-
ever !" And so she clenched her hands and waited. But
the sounds did not diminish in the slightest ; ten minutes,
twenty minutes must have passed, and the baby only
seemed to gain increased power with each crescendo.

It seemed to Corydon at last as'though she had always
lain like this, and as though she. must for endless time.
She found herself getting used to it even ; her muscles
relaxed. There came to her a sense of the ludicrous
side of .it. "He means to conquer me !" she thought.
*'Can I hold out .J" If I only had something to think
about, then I'd be a match for him." And suddenly the
inspiration came to her. '"I'll write a poem!"

What should it be about? The rain had been increas-
ing in violence, and she became conscious of the steady
downpour; it fascinated her, and she concentrated her
attention upon it, and began

•"I am the rain, that comes in spring!"

So, after a while, she found herself in the throes of
composition; she was eager, excited — and marvel of
marvels, utterly forgetful of the baby ! She had never
tried to write verses before; but it did not seem at all
di£5cult to her now.

The poem was simple and optimistic — it told of the
beneficent qualities of rain, as it would appear to one
whose roof did not leak. Somewhere in the course of
it there was this stanza:

"I am the rain that comes at night.
When all in slumber is folded light-
Save one by weary vigils worn
Who counteth the drops unto the morn."

THE TREADMILL 465

This seemed to her an impressive bit, and she wondered
what Thyrsis would think of it.

There were eight stanzas altogether, and when she
finished the last of them the dawn was breaking, and it
seemed hours since she had begun. As for the baby, he
was still crying. She turned and peered at him; his
eyelids drooped, and the crying came in spasms and
gasps — it sounded very feeble, and a trifle perfunctory.
Obviously he could not hold out much longer ; Corydon
would win, yes, she had won already. She lay still, andi
thrills of happiness went through her. Was it the poem,
or the thought of her release, and the nights of quiet
sleep in the future?

When Thyrsis came in, an hour or two later, he
found her huddled up in blankets on the floor of the
living-room, her cheeks bright, her hair dishevelled.
How fascinating she looked in such a guise! She was
eagerly pondering her poem ; and the baby was sleep-
ing quietly, save for a few convulsive gasps, the last
stragglers of his routed forces.

"And oh, Thyrsis," she exclaimed, "to-morrow night
he will only cry half as long, and still less the next night.
And soon he will go to sleep quietly like any well
brought-up, civilized baby. And, my dear, I believe I'm
going to be a poetess — I think that to-night I was really
inspired !"

So he made haste to build a fire, and then came and
sat and hstened to the poem. How eagerly she waited
for his verdict ! How she hung upon his words ! And
what should a man do in such a case — should he be a
husband or a critic.'' Should he be an amateur or a
professional.''

But even as he hesitated, the damage was done. "Oh,

466 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

you don't like it !" she cried. "You don't think it's good
at all!"

"My dear," he argued, "poetry is such a difficult
thing to write. And there are so many standards —
a thing can be good, and yet not good! The heights
are so far away "

"But oh, how can I ever get there," wailed Corydon,
"if nobody gives me any encouragement?"

§ 9. The time had now come for Thyrsis to put his
job through. There was no longer any excuse for hesi-
tation or delay. The book had come to ripeness in him ;
the birth-hour was at hand, and he must go and have it
out with himself. He explained these things to Cory-
don, sitting beside her and holding her hands ; they
ascended once more to the heights of consecration ; they
renewed their vows of fortitude and faith, and then
he went away.

For weeks thereafter he would be like the ghost of a
man in the house, haggard and silent and preoccupied.
AH the work that he had ever done in his life seemed
but child's play in comparison. Before this he had
portrayed the struggles of men and women; but now
he was to portray the agony of a whole nation — his
heart must beat with the pulse of millions of suffering
people. And the task was like a fiend that came upon
him in the night-time and laid hold of him, dragging
him away to sights of terror and madness. He was
never safe from the thing for a moment — he conld
never tell when it might assail him. He might be
washing the dishes, or wrestling with the refractory ,
pump ; but the vision would come to him, and he would
wander off into the forest — perhaps to sit, crouching

THE TREADMILL 467

in the snow, trembling, and staring at the pageant in
his soul.

He lived in the midst of battles ; the smoke of powder
always in his nostrils, the crash of musketry and the
thunder of cannon in his ears. He saw the cavalry
sweeping over the plains, the infantry crouching behind
intrenchments ; he heard the yells of the combatants,
the shrieks of the wounded and dying; he saw the
mangled bodies, and the ground slippery with blood.
New aspects of the thing kept coming to him — ^new
glimpses into meanings yet untold. They would come
to him in great bursts of emotion, like tempests that
swept him away; and these things he had to wrestle
with and master. It meant toil, the like of which he
had never faced before, a tension of all his faculties,
that would last for hours and hours, and leave him
bathed in perspiration, and utterly exhausted.

A scene would come to him, in some moment of in-
sight ; and he would drop everything else, and follow
it. He would go over it, at the same time both creating
and beholding it, at the same time both overwhelmed
by it and controlling it — ^but above all things else, re-
membering it ! He would be like Aladdin in the palace,
stuffing his pockets with priceless jewels; coming away
so loaded down that he could hardly stagger, and spill-
ing them on every side. Then, scarcely pausing to
rest, he would go back after what he had lost ; he would
grope about, gathering diamonds and rubies that he
had all but forgotten — or perhaps coming upon new
vaults and new treasure-chests.

So he would labor over a description, going over
it and over it, not so much working it out, as letting it
work itself out and stamp itself upon his memory. It
made no difference how long the scene might be, he

468 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

would not write a word of it ; it might be some battle-
picture, that would fill thirty or forty pages — ^he would
know it all by heart, as Demosthenes or Webster might
have known an oration. And only at the end would he
write it down.

Over some of the scenes in this new book he labored
thus for two or three weeks at a stretch; there would
be literally not a moment of the day, nor perhaps of
the night, when the thing was not working in some part
of his mind. He would think about it for hours before
he fell asleep ; and when he opened his eyes it would be
waiting at his bedside to pounce upon him. If he tried
for even a few minutes to rest, or to divert his mind
to some other work, he would find himself ill at ease
and troubled, with a sense as of something pulling at
him, calling to him. And if anything came to interrupt
him, then he would be like a baker whose oven grows
cold before the bread is half done — it would be a sad
labor making anything out of that batch of bread.

§ 10. And this work he had to do as a married
man, the father of a family and the head of a house-
hold; living with a child who was one incessant and
irrepressible demand for attention, and a wife who was
wrestling with weakness and sickness — eating out her
heart in cruel loneliness, and cowering in the grip of
fiends of melancholia and despair !

He had thought that when they moved into the new
home, their domestic trials would be at an end. But
now the cruel winter fell upon them. They had never
known what a winter in the country was like; they
came to see why the farmer had protested against theiff
building in such a remote place. There were many days
when they could not get to town, and some when they

THE TREADMILL 469

could not even get to the farm-house. Also there was
the pump, which was continually freezing, and necessi-
tating long and troublesome operations before they
could get any water.

It was, as fate would have it, the worst winter in the
oldest inhabitant's memory. The farmer's well froze
over on three occasions, and it had never frozen before,
so he declared. For such weather as this they were
altogether unprepared ; they had only a wood-stove, and
could not keep a fire all night; and the cheap blankets
they had bought were made all of cotton, and gave them
almost no protection. They would not sleep with the
windows down ; and so, for weeks at a time, they would
go to bed with their clothing, even their overcoats on ;
and would pile curtains and rugs upon these — and even
so, they would waken at two or three o'clock in the
morning, shivering and chilled to the bone.

And in this icy room they would have to get up and
build a fire; and it might be half an hour before they
could get the house warm. Also, they had no facilities
for bathing; and so little by little they began to lose
their habits of decency — there were days when Corydon
left her face unwashed, and forgot to brush her hair.
Everyday, it seemed, they slipped yet further down the
grade. Thyrsis would work until he was faint and
exhausted, and then he would come over, and find there
was nothing ready to eat. By the time that he and
Corydon had cooked a meal, they would both of them
be ravenous, and they would sit and devour their food
like a couple of savages. Then, because they had over-
eaten, they would have to rest before they cleared things
away; and like as not Thyrsis would get to thinking
about his work, and go off and leave everything — and
the dishes and the food might stay up on the table until

470 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

the next meal. There was nearly always a piled-up
mass of dishes and skillets and sauce-pans in the house
— to Thyrsis these soiled dishes were the original source
of the myth of Sisyphus and his labor.

And then there was the garbage-pail that he had for-
gotten to empty, and the lamps he had neglected to fill,
and the slop-pails and the other utensils of domesticity.
There were the diapers that somebody had to wash —
and outside was always the bitter, merciless cold, that
drove them in and shut them up with all this horror.
The time came, as the winter dragged on, when the
house which they had built with so many sacrifices, and
into which they had moved with such eager anticipations,
came to seem to them like a cave in which a couple of
wild beasts cowered for shelter.

§ 11. There was another great change which this
cold weather effected in their lives ; it broke down the
barriers they had been at such pains to build up between
them. It was all very well for them to agree that they
were "brother and sister," and that it was impossible
for them ever to think of anything else. But now came
a time when night after night the thermometer went to
ten or fifteen degrees below zero ; and first Thyrsis
gave more bedding to Corydon — because she was able
to suffer more than he; and he would go over to his
cold hut alone, and crawl into a cold bed, and lie there
the whole night through without a wink of sleep. But
then, as the cold held on for a week or more, the re-
sistance of both of them was broken down — they were
like two animals which crawl into the same hole to keep
each other from freezing. They piled all their bedding
upon one narrow cot ; and sleeping thus, they could be
warm. Even then, they tried to keep to the resolution

THE TREADMILL 4-71

they had made; but this, it seemed, was not within the
power of flesh and blood; and so, once more, the sex-
factor was introduced into the complications of their
lives.

To Thyrsis this thing was like some bird of prey that
circled in the sky just above him — its shadow filling
him with a continual fear, the swish of its wings making
him cringe. He was never happy about it; there was
no time in his hfe when he was not in a state of inward
war. His intellect rebelled ; and on the other hand, there
was a part of his nature that craved this sex-experience
and welcomed it — and this part, it seemed, was favored
by all the circumstances of life. There was no chance
to settle the matter in the light of reason, to test it by
any moral or aesthetic law ; blind fate decreed that one
part of him should have the shaping of his character,
the determining of his needs.

He tried to make clear to himself the basis of his
distrust. Sexual intercourse as a habit — this was the
formula by which he summed it up to himself. To be
right, to win the sanction of the intellect and the con-
science, the sex-act must be the result of a supreme
creative impulse. Its purpose was the making of a
new soul — and this could never be right until those who
took that responsibility had used their reasons, and
determined that circumstances were such that the new
soul might be a sound and free and happy and beautiful
soul. And how different was this from the customs
which prevailed under the sanction of the "holy bonds
of matrimony"! When sexual intercourse became a
self-indulgence, like the eating of candy, or the drink-
ing of liquor ; a thing of the body, and the body alone ;
a thing determined by physical propinquity, by the

472 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

sight and contact of the flesh, the dressing and undress-
ing in the same room !

Then again, the means which they had to use to
prevent conception — which destroyed all spontaneity
in their relationship, and dragged the thing out into
the cold light of day ! And the continual fear that they
might have made another blunder! Something of this
sort was always happening, or seeming to have hap-
pened, or threatening to have happened, so that they
waited each month in suspense and dread. It was this
which made the terror of the whole matter to Thyrsis,
and had so much to do with his repugnance. They were
like people drawing lots for a death-sentence; like
people who ate from dishes, one of which they knew to
contain poison. What was the tragic destiny that hung
over them — the Nemesis that gripped them, and forced
them to take such a chance?

But the barriers were down, and there was no build-
ing them up again; Thyrgis never even tried, because
of the revelation which came to him from Corydon's
side. Corydon was craving, reaching out hungrily for
something which she had not in herself, and which life
did not give her in sufficiency. She called this thing
"love" ; and she had no hesitations and no limits to her
demand for it. To Thyrsis this "love" was something
quite else — it was sustenance and support. To demand
it was an act of weakness, and to yield it was a kind of
spiritual . blood-transfusion. It was the first law of
his life-code that every soul must stand upon its own
feet and walk its own way; and to surrender that
spiritual autonomy was the one blunder for which there
could be no pardon.

But then — ^he would argue with himself — ^what folly
it was to talk of such things in their position! They

THE TREADMILL 4.73

were not souls at all — the life of the soul was not for
them, the laws of the soul had nothing to do with
them. They were two bodies — two miserable and cold
and sick and tormented bodies; and with yet a third
body, utterly helpless and dependent upon them — in
defiance of all the most high-sounding pronouncements
about "the soul" !

So Thyrsis would mock himself into subjection once
more, and go on to play his part as husband and father
and head of a household of bodies. He would play the
game of "love" as Corydon wanted it played ; he would
yield to her demands, he would gratify her cravings,
he would force himself to take her point of view. But
then the other mood would come upon him — the mood
that he knew to be the real expression of himself. He
would begin the battle of his genius again; he would
"hear the echoes afar off, the thunder of the captains
and the shouting". If one gave one's self up to the
body, and accepted the regimen and the laws of the
body, how should the soul ever come to be free? To
make such a concession was to pass upon it a sentence
of life-imprisonment!

So would come to Thyrsis again that sense of the
awful tragedy that was impending in their lives. Some
day, he knew, he would break out of this prison. Some
day, he knew, he would have to be himself, and live his
own life!

And meanwhile, how pitiful were Corydon's attempts
to shape him to her needs, and to persuade herself that
she was succeeding in doing it! She would set forth
to him elaborately how much he had improved ; how much
gentler and more human he was — in contrast with that
blind and stupid and egotistical and impossible person
she had first known. And with what bitterness Thyrsis

474. LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

would hear this — and how he had to struggle to sup-
press his feeling! For he knew that those qualities
which were so hateful to her, were but the foam cast
up to the surface of his soul by the seething of his
genius within. When it had ceased altogether, how
placid and still would be tb e pool — and what a beautiful
mirror it would make foi- Corydon to behold her own
features in!

§ 12. In later years they used to discuss this prob-
lem, and they could never be sure what would have hap-
pened in their lives — what would have been the reaction
of their different temperaments — if they had been given
any fair chance to live and grow as they wanted to.
But here they were, mashed together in this stew-pot
of domesticity, with all the most unlovely aspects of
things forced continually upon their attention. Each
was in some way a handicap and a torment to the other
— a means which fate used to limit and crush and
destroy the other; and as ever, they had in their hours
of anguish no recourse save to sit down and reason it
out together, and absolve each other from blame.

Thyrsis invented a phrase whereby he might make this
point clear to Corydon, and keep it in her thoughts.
The phrase was "the economic screw" ; it pressed upon
him, and through him it crushed her. All things that
he sought to be and could not be, all things that he
would not be and was ; all that was hard and unloving
in him — ^his irritability and impatience, his narrowness
and bitterness — in all this he showed her that cruel
force that was destroying them both.

It was a hard role for Thyrsis, to be the judge and
the jury and the executioner of the stern will of this
"economic screw". There was, for instance, the episode

THE TREADMILL 475

of the "turkey-rred table-cover", which became a classic
in their later Uves. Corydon was always chafing at the
bareness of their little home; and going into the shops
in the town, and discovering things which might have
made it lovely. One evil day she went alone; and when
she came back, Thyrsis, as usual, pounced upon his
mail, and came upon a letter from a magazine-editor
whom he had been trying to please with an article, and
who now scolded him mercilessly for his obstinacy and
his egotism and his didacticism, and all his other un-
publishable qualities. Then came the unwrapping of
the bundles, and Corydon's guileless and joyful an-
nouncement that she had come upon a wonderful bar-
gain in the dry-goods store, a beautiful piece of
"turkey-red" cloth which would serve as the table-cover
for which her soul had been pining — and which she had
obtained for the incredibly small sum of thirty cents !

Whereupon, of course, Thyrsis began to exclaim in
dismay. Thirty cents was a third of all they had to
live upon for a day! And to pay it for a fool piece
of rag for which they had no earthly need ! So Corydon
sank down in the middle of the floor and dissolved in
floods of tears; and at the next trip into town the
"turkey-red table-cover" was returned, and over the
bare board table there were new expositions of the
theory of the "economic screw" !

To these arguments Corydon would listen and assent.
With her intellect she was at one with him, and she
strove to make this intellect supreme. But always, deep
underneath, was the other side of her being, that had
nothing to do with intellect, but was pure primitive im-
pulse— and that pushed and drove in her always, and
carried her away the moment that intellect loosened
its brake. Corydon was ashamed of this primitive self

476 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

— she was always repudiating it, always shutting her
eyes to it. There was no way to wound her so deeply
as to posit its reality and identify it with her.

She was always fighting to make her temperament like
Thyrsis' ; she despised her own temperament utterly,
and set up his qualities as her ideal. He was self-con-
tained and masterful ; he knew What he wanted and how
to get it; he was not dependent upon anyone else-,- he
needed no one's approval or admiration ; he could con-
trol his emotions, and destroy those that inconvenienced
him. So Corydon must be these things also; she was
these things, and no one must gainsay it! And if ever
she had felt or wished or said or done anything else —
that was all misunderstanding or delusion or accident ;
she would repudiate it with grief and indignation, and
proclaim herself the creature of pure reason that every
person ought to be !

But then would come something that appealed to
her emotions — to her love of beauty, her craving for
joy ; and there in a flash was the primitive self again.
The task of compelling Corydon to economy reminded
her husband of a toy which had been popular in his
childhood days. The name of it was "Pigs in Clover" ;
there were five little balls which you had to coax into
a narrow entrance, and while you were getting the last
one in, the other four were almost certain to roll out.
It was a labor of hours to get Corydon to recognize
an unpleasant fact; and then — the next day she had
forgotten it. There were some things about himself and
his life that he could never get her to understand; for
instance, his preoccupation with the newspaper — that
symbol of all that was hateful in life. Just then was
the beginning of the Russian revolution ; and to Thyrsis
the Russian revolution was like the coming of relief to

THE TREADMILL 477

a shipwrecked mariner. It was a personal thing to him
— the overthrow of a horror that pressed upon the life
of every human being upon earth. And so each day he
hungered for the news, and when the paper came he
would pounce upon it.

"Now dearest," he would say, "please don't disturb
me. I want to read."

"All right," she would answer; and five minutes
would pass.

Then — "Do you want potatoes for supper, Thyrsis ?'*

"Yes, dear. But I'm reading now."

"All right." And then another five minutes.

"Thyrsis, who was Boadicea.""'

"I'm reading now, dearest."

"Oh yes." And then another five minutes.

"Thyrsis, do you spell choke with an a?"

At which Thyrsis would put down the paper. "Tell
me, Corydon — isn't there something I can do so that
you won't interrupt me.''"

Instantly a look of pain would sweep across her
face. "Do you have to speak to me like that, Thyrsis.?
If you'd only just tell me, kindly and pleasantly "

"But I've told you three or four times !'

"Thyrsis! How can you say that?"

"But didn't I?"

"Why, of course not !"

And then they would have an argument. He would
bring up each case and confront her with it; and how
very unloving a procedure was that — and how exasper-
ating was his manner as he did it!

§ 13. Then again, Corydon would be going into
town to do some shopping; and he would ask her to
bring out the afternoon paper. It would be the day

478 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

of the October massacre, for instance; and he would
be on fire for the next batch of news. He would explain
this to her; he would tell her again and again — ^what-
ever else she forgot, she must remember the afternoon
paper. He would walk out to meet her, burning with
impatience; and he would ask for the paper, and see
a blank look come over her face.

Then, of course, he would scold. He had certain
phrases — "How perfectly unspeakable! Perfectly par-
alyzing !" How she hated these phrases !

"I had so many things to get !" she would exclaim.

"But only one thing for me, Corydon!"
' "Everything is for you — ^just as much as for my-
self! An these groceries — look at the bundles! I
haven't had a single moment "

"But how many moments does it take to buy a news-
paper?"
h "But Thyrsis "

"And how many times would I have to teU you.''
Have I got to go into town myself, just for the sake
of a newspaper ?"

"I tell you I tried my very best to remember it "

"But what's the matter with you? Is your mind
getting weak?"

And then like as not Corydon would burst into tears.
"Oh, I think you are a brute !" she would cry. "A per-
fect brute !"

Or else, perhaps, she would grow angry, and they
would rail at each other, exchanging recriminations.
' "I think I have burdens enough in my life," he would
exclaim. "I've a right to some help from you."

"You have no sense of proportion!" she would an-
swer. "You are impossible ! You would drive any saint
to distraction."

THE TREADMILL 479

''Perhaps so. But I can't drive you anywhere, and
I'm sick of trying."

"Oh, if you only weren't such a talker ! You talk —
talk— talk!"

And all the while they did this, what grief was in the
depths of them ! And afterwards, what ghastly wounds
in Corydon's soul, that had to be bound up and tended
and healed ! The pity of it, the shame of it — that they
should be able to descend to such sordidness! That
their love, which they had planned as a noble temple,
should turn out an ugly hovel!

"Oh Thyrsis!" the girl would cry. "The idea that
you should think less of my soul than of an old news-
paper !"

"But that is not so, dearest," he would answer. He
would try to explain to her how much the newspaper
had meant to him, and just why his annoyance had got
the better of him. So they would rehearse the scene
over again ; and like as not their irritation would sweep
over them, and before they realized it they would find
themselves disputing once more.

Thyrsis would be making a desperate attempt to
bring her to a realization of his difficulties ; he would
be in the midst of pouring out some eloquence, when she
would interrupt him.

"But Thyrsis, wait a moment — you do not imder-
stand !"

"I am speaking!" he would say.

"But, Thyrsis "

"I am speaking !" He would not be interrupted.

But then would come a time when they sat down to-
gether and talked all this out, perceiving it as one more
aspect of the disharmony of their temperaments. It
was no fault of either of them, they would agree; it

480 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

was just that they were different. Thyrsis had a simile
that he used — "It's a marriage between a butterfly and
a hippopotamus. You don't blame the butterfly because
it can't get down into the water and snort; and on the
other hand, when the hippopotamus tries to flap his
wings and flit about among the flowers, he doesn't make
a success of it."

There would be times when he took Corydon's point
of view entirely. She was beautiful and good ; her
naivete and guilelessness were the essence of her charm ;
and how preposterous it was to expect her to think
about newspapers, or to be familiar with the price of
beefsteaks ! As for him — he was a blundering creature,
dull and pragmatical; he was a great spiny monster
that she had drawn up from the ocean-depths. She
would cut ofl' his spines, but at once they grew out
again ; she could do nothing with him at all !

But then she would protest. "It's not so bad as that,
Thyrsis. You have your work."

"Yes, that's it," he would answer. "My work ! I'm
just a thinking-machine. I'm fit for nothing else. And
here I am — married!"

He would say that, and he would mean it; he would
try to act upon the conviction. Of course Corydon's
nature was a thing more lovely than his ; and, of course,
it ought to have its way, to grow in freedom and joy.
But alas — there was "the economic screw" ! His quali-
ties— hateful though they might be — were the product
of stern conditions ; they were the qualities which had
to dominate in their lives, if they were to survive in the
grim struggle for life.

§ 14. It was, as always, their tragedy that they had
no means of communicating, except through suff'ering ;

THE TREADMILL 481

they had no work, and they had no art, and they had
no rehgion. To Thyrsis it seemed that this last was
the supreme need of their lives ; but it was quite in vain
that he tried to supply it. He had no theologies to
offer, but he had a rough working faith that served
his needs. He had a way of prayer — informal prayers,
to the undiscovered gods — "Oh infinite Holiness of life,
I seek to be reminded of Thee !" He would contemplate
their failures and agonies and despairs, and floods of
pity would well up in him ; and then he would come back
to Corydon, seeking to make these things real to her.
But this he could never do — ^he could never carry her
with him, he could never find anything with her but
failure and disappointment.

This was, in part, the outrage that the creed-mongers
had done to her; with their dead formulas and their
grotesque legends and their stupid bigotries they had
sullied and defaced all the symbols of religion — they
had made a noble temple into a sepulchre of dead bones.
They had taken her by force, when she was a child,
and dragged her into it, and filled her with terror and
loathing. To abandon the language of metaphor, they
had sent her to a Protestant-Episcopal Sunday-school,
where a vinegary spinster had taught her the catechism
and the ten commandments. And so forever after the
whole content of Christianity was a thing alien and
hateful to her.

But also, in their disharmony was something even
more fundamental. Corydon's emotions did not come in
the same way as her husband's. With her a joy had to
be a spontaneous thing; there could be no reasoning
about it, and it was not the product nor the occasion
of any act of will. In fact, if anyone were to say to
Corydon, "Come, let us experience a certain emotion" —

482 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

then straightway it would become certain that she might
experience any emotion in the world, save only that one.

Thyrsis told himself that he was to blame for this,
having destroyed her spontaneity in the very beginning.
But how was he to have known that, understanding as
' he did no temperament but his own, being powerless to
handle any tools but his own.? The process of his
soul's life was to tell himself all his vices over; and so
he would become filled with hatred of himself, and would
forthwith evolve into something different. But with
Corydon, this method produced, not rage and resolu-
tion, but only black despair. The process of Corydon's
soul-life was that some one else should come to her, and
tell her that she was radiant and exquisite ; and straight-
way she would become these things, and yet more of
them ; and until such a person came to her, all her soul's
life stood still.

This was illustrated whenever there was any misun-
derstanding between them, any crisis of unhappiness or
fit of melancholia. It was quite in vain at such times
that Thyrsis would ask her to sweep these things aside
and forget them; it was disastrous to suggest that she
put any blame upon herself, or scold herself into a dif-
ferent attitude. He might take days to make up his
mind to do what he had to do — yet that fit of misery
would last until he had come and done it. He had to
put his arms about her, and make her realize that she
was precious to him, that she was necessary to him, that
he loved her and appreciated her and believed in her ;
so, and so only, would the current of her life begin
once more to flow.

And why could he not do this more quickly.' Why did
he have to wait until she had suffered agonies .? Why did
he have to be dragged to it by the hair of his head, as

THE TREADMILL 483

it were — as a means of keeping her from going insane
from misery? Was it that he did not really love her?
Mocking voices in his soul told him that was it — but
he knew it was not so. He loved her ; but he loved her
in his way, and that was not her way. And how shall
one explain that strange impulse in the heart of man,
that makes it impossible for him to be content with
anything that is upon the earth — that makes him rest-
less in the presence of beauty and love and joy, and all
those things with which he so obviously ought to be
content?

It is so clearly irrational and unjustifiable; and yet
that impulse continues to drive him forth, as it drove
him to destroy the statues in the Athenian temples, and
to bum the silken robes and the jewelled treasures in
the public-squares of Venice. One contemplates the
thing in its most unlovely aspects — in the form of
Simeon Stylites upon his pillar, devoured by worms, or
of Bernard Gui, with his racks and his thumb-screws and
his "secular arm" — and it seems the very culmination of
all human madness and horror. And yet, it does not
cease to come ; and he upon whom it seizes may not
free himself by any power of his will, by any cunning
of his wit ; and no agony of yearning and grief may be
sufficient to enable him to love a woman as a woman de-
sires to be loved.

§ 15. Thyesis would work over the book until he
was utterly exhausted; and then, limp as a rag, he
would come back to the world of reality and face these
complications. He needed to rest, he needed to be
soothed and comforted and sung to sleep ; he needed to
receive — and instead he had to give. Sometimes he
wondered vaguely if this might not have been otherwise ;

484 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

he knew nothing about women — ^but surely there might
have been, somewhere in the world, some woman who
would have understood, and would have asked nothing
from him. But he dwelt on that thought but seldom,
for it seemed a kind of treason ; he was not married to
any such hypothetical woman — he was married to Cory-
don, and it was Corydon he had to save from the
wolves.

So, time after time, he would come back to her, and
take the cup of her pain in his trembling hands, and
put it to his lips and drain it to the dregs. He would
sit with her, and hear the tale of her struggles, he
would fan the sparks of his exhausted emotions into
flame, so that she might warm herself by the glow. And
when the burden became too great for him, when the
black floods of anguish and despair which she poured
out upon him threatened to engulf him altogether —
then he would tramp away into the forest, or out upon
the snow-encrusted hills, and call up the demons of his
soul once more, and proclaim himself unconquered and
unconquerable. He would spread his wings to the glory
of his vision; he would feel again the surge and sweep
of it, he would sing aloud with the power of it, and
pledge himself anew to live for it — if need be even to
die for it.

The world was trying to crush it in him ; the world
hated it and feared it, and was bound that it should
not live; and Thyrsis had sworn to save it — and so
the issue was joined. He would hearten himself for
the struggle — ^he would fling himself into the thick of
it, again and again; he would summon up that thing
which he called his Genius, that fountain of endless
force that boiled up within him. Whatever strength
they brought against him, he could match it; he might

THE TREADMILL 485

be knocked down, trampled upon, left for dead upon
the field, but he could rise and renew the conflict! He
would talk to himself, he would call aloud to himself,
he would repeat to himself formulas of exhortation,
<;ries of defiance, proclamations of resolve. He would
summon his enemies before him, sometimes in hosts,
sometimes as individuals — all those who ever in his life
had mocked and taunted him, scolded him and threatened
him. He would shake his clenched fists at them; they
might as well understand it — they could never conquer
him, not all the power they could bring would suffice!
He would call upon posterity also ; he would summon
his friends and lovers of the future, to give him com-
fort in his sore distress. Was it not for them that he
was laboring — that they might some day feed their souls
upon his faith.?

Thyrsis would think of the "Song of Roland", re-
calling that heroic figure and his three days' labor:
when he had read that poem, his heart had seemed
to throb with pain every time that Roland lifted his
sword-arm. He would think of the old blind "Samson
Agonistes" ; he would think of the Greeks at Ther-
mopyljB, of the siege of Haarlem. History was full of
such tales of the agonies that men had endured for the
sake of their faith; and why should he expect exemp-
tion, why should he shrink from the fiery test?

§ 16. So he lived and fought two battles, one within
and one without; and little by little these two became
merged in his imagination. He had conceived a figure
which should embody the War ; and that figure had come
to be himself.

The War of which he was writing had come upon
a people unsuspecting and unprepared; they had not

486 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

sought it nor desired it, they did not love it, they did
not understand it. But the nation must be preserved;
and so they set out to forge themselves into a sword.
They had wealth, and they poured it out lavishly ; and
they had enthusiasm — whole armies of young men came
forward. They were uniformed and armed smd drilled,
and one after another they marched out, with banners
waving, and drums rolling, and hearts beating high with
hope; and one after another they met the enemy, and
were swallowed up in carnage and destruction, and came
reeling back in defeat and despair. It happened so
often that the whole land moaned with the horror of it
— there was Bull Run and then again BuU Run, and
there was the long Peninsula Campaign — an entire year
of futility and failure; and there was the ghastly
slaughter of Fredericksburg, and the blind confusion
of Chancellorsville, and the bitter, disappointment of
Antietam.

Thyrsis wished to portray all this from the point of
view of the humble private, who got none of the glory,
and expected none, but only suffering and toil ; whose
lot it was to march and countermarch, to delve and
sweat in the trenches, to be stifled by the heat and
drenched by the rain and frozen by the cold; to wade
through seas of blood and anguish, to be wounded and
captured and imprisoned, to be lured by victory and
blasted by defeat. And into it all he was pouring the
distillation of his own experiences. For there was not
much of it that he had not known in his own person.
Surely he had known what it was to be cold and hungry ;
surely he had known what it was to be lured by victory
and blasted by defeat. He had watched by the death-
bed of his dearest dreams, he had listened to the moaning
of multitudes of imprisoned hopes. He had known

THE TREADMILL 487

what it was to set before him a purpose, and to cling
to it in spite of obloquy and hatred; he had known
what it was to suffer until his forehead throbbed, and
all things reeled and swam before his eyes. He had
known also what it was to sacrifice for the sake of the
future, and to see others, who thought of no one but
themselves, preying upon him, and upon the community,
and living in luxury and enjoying power.

Little by little, as he studied this War, Thyrsis had
come upon a strange and sinister fact about it.
Roughly speaking, the population of the country might
have been divided into two classes. There were those
to whom the Union was precious, and who gave their
labor and their lives for it; they starved and fought
and agonized for it, and came home, worn, often crip-
pled, and always poor. On the other hand there were
some who had cared nothing for the Union, but were
finding their chance to grow rich and to establish them-
selves in the places of power. They were selling shoddy
blankets and paper shoes to the government ; they were
speculating in cotton and gold and food. There were
a few exceptions to this, of course ; but for the most
part, when one came to study the gigantic fortunes
which were corrupting the nation, he discovered that
it was just here they had begun.

So this was the curious and ironic fact; the nation
had been saved — but only to be handed over to the
money-changers! And these now possessed it and
dominated it; and a new generation had come forward,
which knew not how these things had come to be —
which knew only the money-changers and their power.
And who was there to tell them of the War, and all
that the War had meant .'' Who was there to make

488 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

that titan agony real to them, to point them to the
high destinies of the Republic?

Along with his war-books, Thyrsis was reading his
daily newspaper, which came to him freighted with the
cynicism of the hour. It was when the revelations of
corruption in business and political affairs were at
their flood; high and low, in towns and cities, in states
and in the nation itself, one saw that the government
of the country had been bought. Everywhere through-
out the land Mammon sat upon the throne, and men
cringed before him — there was only persecution and
mockery for those who believed in the things for which
America stood to all the world.

And this new Lord, who had purchased the people,
and held them in bond, was extracting a toll of suffer-
ing and privation, of accident and disease and death,
that was worse than the agony of many wars. The
whole land was groaning and sweating beneath the bur-
den of it; and Thyrsis, who shared the pain, and knew
the meaning of it, was sick with the responsibility it
put upon him, yearning for a thousand voices with
which he might cry the truth aloud.

Some one must bring America face to face with its
soul again ; and who was there to do it — who was there
that was even trying? Thyrsis had seen the statues of
St. Gaudens, and he knew there was one man who had
dreamed the dream of his country. But who was there
to put it into song, or into story, that the young might
read? Like the newspapers and the churches, the
authors had sold out ; they were writing for matinee-
girls, and for the Pullman-car book-trade; and mean-
time the civilization of America was sliding down into
the pit !

So here again was War ! Here again were pain and

THE TREADMILL 489

sickness, hunger and cold, solitude and despair, to be
endured and defied; death itself to be faced — madness
even, and soul-decay! Armies of men had gone out,
had laid themselves down and filled up the ditches with
their bodies, to make a bridge for Freedom to pass on.
And the ditches were not yet full — another life was
needed !

Nor must he think himself too good for the sacrifice ;
there had been greater men than he, no doubt, burned
up in the Wilderness, and blown to pieces by the cannon
at "Bloody Angle" ; there had been dreamers of mighty
dreams among them — and they were dead, and all their
dreams were dead. And neither must he love his own
too dearly ; there had been women who had suffered and
died in that War, and babes who had perished by tens
of thousands ; and they, too, had been born with agony,
had been loved and yearned for, and wept and prayed
for.

So, out of the dead past, were voices calling to
Thyrsis ; he heard them in the night-time as one mighty
symphony of grief. They had died for nothing, un-
less the Republic should be saved, unless their dream
of freedom and justice could be made real. And for
what was the poet but that.? So that the new genera-
tions might know what their fathers had done — that
the youth of America might be roused and thrilled
once more! Surely it could not be that the land was
aU sunk in selfishness and unfaith — that there were no
longer any generous souls who could be stirred by a
trumpet-call, and led forth to strike a new blow for
the great hope of Humanity !

§ 17. The long winter dragged by, and the fury
of it seemed to increase; they were as if besieged by

490 LOVIl'S PILGRIMAGE

demons of cold and storm. There came another bliz-
zard, and the snows drifted down to their hollow by
the edge of the woods, so that it was two days before
they could get out, even to the farm-house. And there
was no place for them to walk — a path from their
house to Thyrsis' study was a labor of half a day to
dig. Also Corydon caught a cold, which ran in due
course through the little family, and added to their
misery and discomfort.

The snow seemed to be symbolical, walling them in
from all the world. "There is no help", it seemed to
say to them ; whatever strength they got they must
wring out of their own hearts. Here in this place,
it seemed to Thyrsis, he learned the real meaning of
Winter ; he saw it as primitive man had seen it, a cruel
and merciless assailant, a fiend that came ravening,
dealing destruction and death. He thought of the ode
by Thomas Campbell —

"Archangel! Power of desolation!
Fast descending as thou art,
Say, hath mortal invocation

Spells to touch thy stony heart.'"

Surely no Runic Odin, who "howled his war-song to the
gale", no Lapland savage who cowered in his hut, ever
panted for the respite of the spring-time more than
these two lovers in their tiny cottage.

It was evident that Corydon was going down-hiU
under the strain. She became more and more nervous
and wretched, her headadhes and her fits of exhaustion
were more frequent. Then, too, her old mental trouble,
the habit of "thinking things", was plaguing her again.
She would come to Thyrsis with long accounts of her

THE TREADMILL 491

psychological entanglements, and he would patiently
unravel the skein. Or sometimes, if he was very tired,
he might give some signs of a desire to escape the or-
deal; and then he would see a look of terror stealing
into Corydon's eyes. So these things were real after
all — they were real even to Thyrsis !

One morning he opened his eyes, and' looked from his
study-window, to find that another heavy snow had
fallen; and when he had dressed and gone over to the
house, he found Corydon in bed. She complained of a
headache, and had had chills during the night, and was
now quite evidently feverish. He was alarmed, and
after he had made her as comfortable as he could, he
dressed the baby and took him upon his shoulder, and
made his way with difficulty to the farm-house. He
left the baby there, and with a horse and sleigh set out
for town. The horse had to walk all the way, and
several times the sleigh was upset in the drifts, so that
it was two hours before he reached his destination. As
the doctor was out upon his rounds, he had to wait a
couple of hours more — and then only to learn that the
man could not possibly attempt the trip. He had
several patients who were dangerously ill, and he had
to be on hand.

He sent Thyrsis to another doctor, but this one said
exactly the same ; and so the boy spent the day wander-
ing about the town. The thought of Corydon's lying
there alone, helpless and suffering, made him wild; but
everywhere he met with the same response — the cold
weather had apparently brought an epidemic of disease,
and there was no doctor in the place who could spare
three or four hours to make the long journey in the
snow.

So there was nothing for him to do but go back.

492 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

The farmer's wife offered to take care of the baby
over night, and he went down to the cottage alone,
where he found Corydon much worse. He sat and held
her hand, a terror clutching at his heart ; and all night
long he sat and tended her — ^he filled hot water bottles
when she was chilled, and got ice when she was hot,
and made cool- lemonade, and prepared tidbits and
tempted her to eat. He would whisper to her and soothe
her ; and later, when she fell into a doze, he sat nodding
in his chair and shivering with cold, but afraid to touch
the fire for fear of disturbing her.

Then, towards dawn, she wakened; and Thyrsis was
almost beside himself with anguish and fear — for she
was delirious, and did not know where she was, or what
she was doing. She kept talking as if to the baby —
in their baby-talk. Thyrsis would listen, until he would
choke up with tears.

He left her, and went up to the farm, and got the
horse and sleigh again, and drove to another town.
It made no difference what doctor he got — to Thyrsis
all doctors were alike, the keepers of the keys of health.
After several hours' pursuit he found that this man
also was busy. AH he could say was that he would try
to get out that night.

So Thyrsis went back again, to find his wife with
flushed face, and beads of perspiration upon her fore-
head; now sitting up and babbling aimlessly, now sink-
ing back exhausted. He sat once more through a night
of torment, holding her hot hands in his, and praying
in vain for the coming of the doctor.

It was afternoon of the next day before the man
finally came, and brought some relief to Thyrsis' soul,
and perhaps also to Corydon's body. He took her
temperature and listened to her breathing, and pro-

THE TREADMILL 49S

nounced it a severe attack of grippe, with a touch of
bronchitis ; and he laid out an assortment of capsules
and liquids, and promised to come again if Thyrsis sent
for him.

And so the boy set out in the double role of trained
nurse and mother's assistant. He gave Corydon her
medicines, and brought fresh water for her, and
smoothed her pillows and talked to her, and prepared
some delicacies for her when she wished to eat ; also he
dressed and bathed the baby, and cooked his complex
meals and fed them to him; he put on his rubbers and
his leggings and his mittens, and the overcoat and
peaked hood (which Corydon had devised for him out
of eighty cents' worth of woolly red cloth) , and turned
him out to "bongie cowtoos" in the snow. Likewise
he got his own meals and washed the dishes, and tended
the fires and emptied the ashes and filled the lamps
and swept the floors ; and in the interim between these
various duties he fought new battles within himself, and
got new side-lights upon Chickamauga and "Bloody
Angle".

§ 18. It was two weeks before this siege was lifted,
and Corydon was able to take up her burdens once
more. It was then March, and the snow had given
place to cold sleety rains, and the fields and the ground
about their home were miniature swamps full of mud.
Thyrsis would tramp through this to the hill-tops
where the storm-winds howled, and there vow defiance
to his foes, and come home to pour new hope and
courage and resolution into a bottomless pit.

He was finishing his vision of the field of Gettys-
burg— the three-days' grapple between two titan armies,
that meant to him three weeks of soul-terrifying toil.

494 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Men had said that Gettysburg meant the turning of
the tide, that victory was certain ; and yet there had
followed Sherman's long campaign, and all the horror
of the Wilderness fighting, and Mine Run and Cold
Harbor and the ghastly siege of Petersburg. And now
Thyrsis had to fight his way through this. He saw
the figure that he had dreamed, and that possessed him ;
a soldier who was the rage of the War incarnate, the
awakened frenzy of the nation. He was a man lifted
above pain and cold and hunger; he was gaunt and
wild of aspect, restless and impatient, driving, driving
to the end. He went about the duties of the camp like
one in a dream ; he marched like an automaton — for
hours, or for days, as need might be — his thoughts
flying on to those moments that alone were real to him,
to the charge and the fury of the conflict, the blows
that were the only things that counted. He lived amid
sights and sounds of horror, with groans and weeping
in his ears, with a mist of blood and cannon-smoke be-
fore his eyes ; he drove on, grim and implacable, the
very ground about him rocking and quivering in a de-
lirium of torment. He was the War!

Meantime Corydon was growing paler, and more
wretched than ever. For her, too, this winter was
symboUzed as a battle-ground. To him it was a field
in which armies clashed, and the issue was imcertain;
but to her it was a field of inevitable defeat, strewn
with the corpses of her hopes. For hours she would lie
upon her couch in the night-watches, silent, alone, star-
ing out of the window at the wide waste of snow in the
pitiless moonlight.

Thyrsis would have preferred to sleep in his own
study, as he worked so late at night; but Corydon

THE TREADMILL 495

begged him not to do this, she would rather be wakened,
she said.

So, on one occasion, he came over at about two o'clock
in the morning, and found her sleeping, as he thought,
and crawled into his own cot. He was just dozing off
to sleep, when he heard what he thought was a stifled
sob.

He listened; he thought that she was crying in her
sleep. But then, as the sound grew clearer, he sat up.
The moonlight was shining in upon her, and Thyrsis
caught a bright glint of steel. Swift as a flash the
meaning of that swept over him. He had provided her
with a revolver, that she might feel safe when she was
left alone ; and now he bounded out of bed and sprang
across the room, and found her with the weapon pointed
at her head.

He struck it away ; and Corydon, with a terrified cry,
clutched at him and collapsed in his arms.

"Oh Thyrsis !" she wailed. "Save me ! Save me !"

"What is it.?" he gasped.

"I couldn't do it!" she cried, choking. "I couldn't!
I tried — I tried so hard !"

"Sweetheart", he whispered, in terror.

"Don't let me do it!" she sobbed. "Oh, Thyrsis,
you must save me!"

He pressed her to his bosom, shuddering with dread,
and trying to soothe her hysterical outburst. So, little
by little, he dragged the story from her. For three
days she had been making up her mind to shoot her-
self, and she had chosen that night for the time.

"I've been sitting here for an hour," she whispered
— "with the revolver in my hand. And I couldn't get
up the courage to pull the trigger."

He clasped her, white with horror.

496 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"I heard you coming," she went on. "I lay down
and pretended to sleep. Then I tried again^ — but I
can't, I can't! I'm a coward!"

"Corydon!" he cried.

"There was only one thing that stopped me. You
would have got on without me "

"Don't say that, dearest !"

"You would — I know it ! I'm only in your way. But
oh, my baby! I loved him so, and I couldn't bear to
leave him!"

She clung to him convulsively. "Oh, Thyrsis," she
panted, "think what it meant to me to leave him.
He'd have been without a mother all bis hfe! And
something might have happened to you, and he'd have
had no one to love him at all!"

"Why did you want to do it?" he cried.

"Oh Thyrsis, I've suffered so ! I'm weary — I'm worn
out — I'm sick of the fight. I can't stand it any more
— and what can I do.'"'

"My poor, poor girl," he whispered, and pressed her
to his heart in a paroxysm of grief. "Oh, my Cory-
don! My Corydon!"

The horror of the thing overwhelmed him ; he began
to weep himself — ^his frame was shaken with tearless,
agonizing sobs. What could he do for her, how could
he help her?

But already he had helped her ; it was not often that
she saw him weeping, it was not often she found that
she could do something for him. "Thyrsis, do you
really, want me?" she whispered. "Do you truly love
me that much?"

"I love you, I love you!" he sobbed.

And she replied, "Then I'll stay. I'll bear anything,
if you need me — if I can be of any use at all."

THE TREADMILL 497

§ 19. So their tears were mingled; so once more,
being sufficiently plowed up with agony, they might
behold the deeps of each other's souls. Being at their
last gasp, and driven to desperation, they would make
the convulsive effort, and break the crust of dullness
and commonplace, and reveal again the mighty forces
hidden in their depths. At such hours he beheld Cory-
don as she was, the flaming spirit, the archangel
prisoned in the flesh. If only he could have found the
key to those deep chambers, so that he could have had
access to them always!

But alas, they knew only one path that led to them,
and that through the valley of despair. From despair
it led to anguished struggle, and from struggle to
defiance, to rage and denunciation — and thence to
visions and invocations, raptures and enthralments. So
this night, for instance, behold Corydon, first holding
her husband's hands, and shuddering with awe, and
pledging her faith all over again ; and then, later on,
when the dawn was breaking, sitting in the cold moon-
light with a blanket flung about her, her wild hair toss-
ing, and in her hand the revolver with which she had
meant to destroy herself. Behold her, making sport
of her own life-drama — turning into wildest phantasy
her domestic ignominies, her inhibitions and her help-
mate's blunderings ; evoking the hosts of the future as
to a festival, rehearsing the tragedy of her soul with
all posterity as her audience. When once these mad
steeds of her fancy were turned loose, one could never
tell where their course would be; and strange indeed
were the adventures that came to him who rode with
her!

There seemed to be no limit to the powers of this
subliminal woman within Corydon. Her cheeks would

498 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

kindle, her eyes would blaze, and eloquence would pour
from her — ^the language of great poetry, fervid and
passionate, with swift flashes of insight and illumina-
tion, tumultuous invocations and bursts of prophecy.
Thyrsis would listen and marvel. What a mind she had
— sharp, like a rapier, swift as the lightning-flash!
The powers of penetration and understanding, and
above aU the sheer splendors of language — ^the blazes
of metaphor, the explosions of coruscating wit ! What
a tragic actress she might have made — how she would
have shaken men's souls, and set them to shuddering
with terror ! What an opera-singer she could have been,
with that rich vibrant voice, and the mien of a disin-
herited goddess !

It was out of such hours that the faith of their
lives was made ; and it was out of them also that Thyrsis
formed his idea of woman. To him woman was an
equal; and this he not only said with his lips, he lived
it in his feelings. The time came when he went out
into the world, and learned to understand the world's
idea, that woman meant vanity and pettiness and
frivolity ; but Thyrsis let all this pass, knowing the
woman-souL Somewhere underneath, not yet under-
stood and mastered, was pent this mighty force that
in the end would revolutionize aR human ideas and insti-
tutions. Here was faith, here was vision, here was the
power of all powers ; and how was it to be delivered
and made conscious, and brought into the service of
life?

Most women liked Thyrsis, because they divined in
some vague way this attitude; and some men hated him
for the same reason. These men, Thyrsis observed,
were the slave-drivers ; they held that woman was the
weaker vessel, and for this they had their own motives.

THE TREADMILL 499

There were women, too, who liked to be ruled; but
Thyrsis never argued with them — ^it was enough, he
judged, to treat any slave as a free man, or any servant
as a gentleman, and sooner or later they would divine
what he meant, and the spirit of revolt would begin to
flicker.

Book XIII
THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE

They stood upon the porch of the little cabin, listen-
ing to the silence of the night.

"How far away it all seems!" she said —

"How many a dingle on the loved hill-side
Hath since our day put by
The coronals of that forgotten time!"

"It makes one feel old," he said — "like the coming
of the night!"

"The night!" she repeated, and went on —

"7 feel her finger light
Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train; —
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew.
The heart less bounding at emotion new.
And hope once crush'd less quick to spring again!"

§ 1. Throughout this long winter of discontent
came to them one ray of hope from the outside world.
"The Genius" was given in the little town in Germany,
and Thyrsis' correspondent sent the twenty-five dollars,
and wrote that it had made a great impression, and
that more performances were to be expected. Then,
after an interval, Thyrsis was surprised to receive from
his clipping-bureau some items to the effect that his
play was to be produced in one of the leading theatres
in Berlin. He wrote to his correspondent for an ex-
planation, and learned to his dismay that his play had
been "pirated" ; it was, of course, not copyright .in
Germany, and so he had no redress, and must content
himself with what his friend referred to as "the renowns
which will be brought to you by these performances".

The play came out, in the early spring, and ap-
parently made a considerable sensation. Thyrsis read
long reviews from the German papers, and there were
accounts of it in several American papers. So people
began to ask who this unknown poet might be. The
publishers of "The Hearer of Truth" were moved to
venture new advertisements of the book — whereby they
sold perhaps a hundred copies more; and Thyrsis was
moved to pay some badly-needed money to have more
copies of the play made, so that he might try to interest
some other manager. He carried on a long corre-
spondence with a newly-organized "stage society", which
thought a great deal about trying the play at a matinee,

but did nothing.

503

504 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Also, Thyrsis received a letter from one of the
country's popular novelists, who had heard of the play
abroad, and asked to read it. When he had read it,
and told what an interesting piece of work it was,
Thyrsis sat down and wrote the great man about his
plight, and asked for help ; which led to correspondence,
and to the passing round of the manuscript among a
group of literary people. One of these was Haddon
Channing, the critic and essayist, who was interested
enough to write Thyrsis several long letters, and to
read the rest of his productions, and later on to call
to see him. Which, visit proved a curious experience for
the family.

He arrived one day towards spring, when it chanced
that Corydon was in town visiting the dentist. Thyrsis
had just finished his dinner when he saw two people
coming through the orchard, and he leaped up in haste
to put the soiled dishes away, and make the place as
presentable as possible. Mr. and Mrs. Channing had
come in their car (they lived in Philadelphia), and were
followed by an escort of the farmer's children — since
an automobile was a rare phenomenon in that neigh-
borhood. The entrance to the peach-orchard proved
not wide enough for the machine, so they had to get
out and walk; and this they found annoying, because
the ground was wet and soft. All of which seemed to
emphasize the incongruity of their presence.

Haddon Channing might have been described as a
dilettante radical. He employed a highly-wrought and
artificial style, which scintillated with brilliant epigram ;
one had a feeling that it rather atoned for the evils
in human life, that they became the occasion of so
much cleverness in Channing's books. Perhaps that was
the reason why most people did not object to the vague-

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 605

ness of his ideas, when it came to any constructive
suggestion. In fact he rather made a point of such
vagueness — when you tried to do anything about a so-
cial evil, that was politics, and politics were vulgar.
One could never pin Channing down, but his idea seemed
to be that in the end all men would become free and
independent spirits, able to malce their own epigrams ;
after which there would be no more evil in the world.

And here he was in the flesh. It seemed to Thyrsis
as if he must have made a study of his own books, and
then proceeded to fit his person and his clothing, his
accent and his manner, to make a proper setting thereto.
He was tall and lean, immaculate and refined ; he spoke
with airy and fastidious grace, pouring out one con-
tinuous stream of cleverness — any hour of his conver-
sation was equivalent to a volume of his works at a
dollar and a quarter net.

Also, there was Mrs. Channing, gracious and ex-
quisite, looking as if she had stepped out of one of
Rossetti's poems. She was a poetess herself; writing
about Acteon, and Antinoiis, and other remote sub-
jects. Thyrsis assumed that there must be something
in these poems, for they were given two or three pages
in the thirty-five-cent magazines; but he himself had
never discovered any reason why he should read one
through.

§ 2. They seated themselves upon his six-foot
piazza; and Thyrsis, who had very little sense of per-
sonality, and was altogether wrapped up in ideas, was
soon in the midst of a free and easy discussion with
them. It seemed ages since he had had an opportunity
to exchange opinions with anyone except Corydon.
With these people he roamed over the fields of litera-

506 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

ture; and as they found nothing to agree about any-
where, the conversation did not flag.

A strange experience it must have been to them, to
come to a lonely shanty in the woods, and encounter
a haggard boy in a cotton-shirt and a pair of frayed
trousers, who was all oblivious of their elegance, and
unawed by their reputation, and who behaved like a
bull in the china-shop of their orderly opinions. Mrs.
Channing, it seemed, was completing her life-work, a
volume which was to revolutionize current criticism,
and lead the world back to artistic health ; to her,
modern civilization was a vast abortion, and in Greek
culture was to be sought the fountain-head of health.
She sang the praises of Athenian literature and art
and life ; there was sanity and clarity, there was balance
and serenity! And to compare it with the jangled
confusion and the frantic strife of modern times !

To which Thyrsis answered, "We'd best let modern
times alone. For here you've aU facts and no generali-
zation ; and in the case of the Greeks you've all gener-
alization and no facts."

And so they went at it, hot and heavy. Mrs. Chan-
ning, her Greek serenity somewhat rufiled, insisted that
she had studied the facts for herself. The other pro-
ceeded to probe into her equipment, and found that
she knew Homer and Sophocles, but did not know Aris-
tophanes so well, and did not know the Greek epigrams
at all. Thyrsis maintained that the dominant note in
the Greek heritage was one of bewilderment and despair ;
in support of which alarming opinion he carried the
discussion from the dreams of Greek literature to the
realities of Greek life. Did Mrs. Channing know how
the Greeks had persecuted all their great thinkers.''

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 507

Did she know anything about the cruelties of their
slave-code ?

"Have you ever studied Greek politics?" he asked.
"Do you realize, for instance, that it was the custom
of statesmen and generals who were defeated by their
political rivals, to go over to the enemy and lead an
expedition against their homes?"

"Isn't that putting it rather strongly?" asked Mrs.
Channing.

"I don't think so," he answered. "Didn't the con-
querors of both Salamis and Platsea afterwards sell
out to the Persian king? And then you talk about the
noble ideal of woman which the Greeks developed ! Don't
you know that it was nothing but a literary tradition?"

"I had never imderstood that," said Mrs. Channing.

To which the other answered: "It was handed down
from imaginary Homeric days. The Greek lady of
the Periclean age was a domestic prisoner and drudge."

§ 3. Then, late in the afternoon, came Corydon ;
and this part of the adventure must have seemed
stranger yet to the Channings. Corydon wore a shirt-
waist and a ten-cent straw hat, trimmed with some white
mosquito-netting, and an old blue skirt which she had
worn before her marriage, and had enlarged little by
little during the period of her pregnancy, and had taken
in again after the baby was bom. Also she was pale
and sad-looking, much startled by the sight of the
automobile, and the sudden apparition of elegance.
She got rid of her armfuls of groceries and bimdlcs,
and seated herself in an inconspicuous place, and sat
listening while the argument went on. For a full
hour she never uttered a word; only once during the
controversy over the "Greek lady", Mrs. Chaining

508 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

turned to her and asked, "Don't you agree with me?"
But Corydon could only answer, "I don't know, I
have not read much history." And who was there to tell
the visitor that this strange, wide-eyed girl knew more
about the tragedies and terrors of the Greek tempera-
ment than she with all her culture and her college-de-
grees could have learned in many life-times?

The two stayed to supper, and Corydon and Thyrsis
set out the meal upon the rustic outdoor table; they
apologized for their domestic inadequacies, but Mrs.
Channing declared that she "adored picknicking". The
evening was spent in more discussion; and finally it
was decided that the visitors should stay over night at
the hotel in town, and come out again in the morning.

Thyrsis concluded, as he thought the matter over,
that the two must have been fascinated by this domestic
situation, and curious to look deeper into it. Per-
haps they saw "material" in it ; or perhaps it was that
Haddon Channing was really impressed by Thyrsis'
powers, and sought to understand his problems and
help him. Whatever may have been the motive for it,
when they came the next morning, the critic took
Thyrsis for a walk in the woods and proceeded to dis-
cuss his affairs. And meanwhile his wife had set her-
self to the task of probing the innermost corners of
Corydon's soul.

The burden of Channing's discourse was Thyrsis'
impatience and lack of balance, his fanaticism and his
too great opinion of his own work. "My dear fellow,"
he said, "you are the most friendless human being I
have ever encountered upon earth. How can you expect
to interest men if you don't get out into the world and
learn what they are doing?"

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 509

"That means to get a position, I suppose?" said
Thyrsis.

"No, not necessarily " began the other.

"But I haven't money to live in the city otherwise."

That was too definite for Channing, and he went off
on another tack. He had been reading "The Higher
Cannibalism", and he could not forgive it. A boy of
Thyrsis' age had no right to be seething with such
bitterness ; there must be some fundamental and terrible
cause. He was destroying himself, he was eating out
his heart in this isolation ; he was so wrapped up in his
own miseries, his own wrongs — in all the concerns of
his own exaggerated ego !'

They were seated beside a little streamlet in the woods.
"What you need is something to get you out of your-
self," the critic was saying — "something to restore
your sanity and balance. It'll come to you some day.
Perhaps it'll be a love-afiFair — you'll meet some woman
who'll carry you away. I know the sort you need —
they grow in the West — the great brooding type of
woman-soul, that would fold you in her arms and give
you a little peace."

Thyrsis was silent for a space. "You forget," he
said, in a low voice, "that I am already married."

The other shrugged his shoulders. "Such things
have happened, even so," he said.

Thyrsis had taken his part in the conversation be-
fore this, defending himself and setting forth his point
of view. But now he fell silent. The words had cut
him to the quick. It seemed to him an insult and a
bitter humihation ; here, at his home, almost in the
presence of his wife ! What was the man's idea, anyway ?

And suddenly he turned upon Channing with the
question, ^-'Jfou think that I've married a doll?"

510 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

The other was staggered for a moment. "I don't
know what you've married," he replied.

"No," said Thyrsis. "Then how can you advise me
in such a matter?"

"I see that you're not happy " the other began.

"Yes," said the boy. "But I don't want any more
women."

There was a pause, while Thyrsis sat pondering.
Should he try to explain to this man? But he shook
his head. No, it would be useless to try. "She is not
in your class," he said.

"How do you mean?" asked the other.

"She has none of your culture, none of your social
graces. She can't write, and she can't sing — she can't
do anything that your wife does."

"I'm afraid," said Channing, in a low voice, "you
don't take my remarks in the right spirit."

"Even suppose that she were not what you call a
'great woman-soul'," persisted Thyrsis — "at least she
has starved and suffered for me; and wouldn't common
loyalty bind me to her?"

"I have tried to do something very difficult," said the
other, after a silence. "I have tried to talk to you
frankly. It is the most thankless task in the world to
tell a man his own faults."

"I know," said Thyrsis. "And that's all right — I'm
perfectly willing. I don't mind knowing my faults."

"It is evident that you have resented it," declared the
other.

Thyrsis answered with a laugh, "Don't you admit of
replies to your criticisms? Suppose I'm pointing out
some of your faults — ^your faults as a critic?"

Channing said that he did not object to that.

"Very well, then," said Thyrsis. "I simply tdl you

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 511

that you have missed the point of my trouble. There's
nothing the matter with me but poverty and lack of op-
portunity ; and there's nothing else the matter with my
wife. We're doing our best, and it's the simple fact
that we've endured and dared more than anybody we've
ever met. And that's all there is to it."

It was evident that Channing was deeply hurt. He
turned the conversation to other matters, and pretty
soon they got up and strolled on. When they came
near to the house, he went off to see his chauffeur, and
Thyrsis stood watching him, and pondering over, the
episode.

It was the same thing that had happened to him in
the city ; it was the thing that would be happening to
him all the time. He saw that however wretched he
might be with Corydon, he would always take her part
against the world. Whatever her faults might be, they
were not such as the world could judge. Rather would
he make it the test of a person's character, that they
should imderstand and appreciate her, in spite of her
lack of that superficial thing called culture — the ability
to rattle off opinions about any subject under the sun.

So it was that loyalty to Corydon held him fast.
So her temperament was his law, and her needs were his
standards ; and day by day he must become more like
her, and less like himself!

§ 4. He returned to the house, entering by the rear
door. The baby was lying in the room asleep, and out
upon the piazza he could hear Corydon and Mrs. Chan-
ning. Corydon was speaking, in her intense voice.

"The trouble with me," she was saying, "is that I
have no confidence ! Other women are sure of them-
selves— they are self-contained, serene, satisfied.'*

612 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"But why shouldn't you be that way?" Thus Mrs.
Channing.

"I aim too high," said Corydon. "I want too much.
I defeat myself."

"Yes," said the other, "but why "

"It's been the circumstances of all my life! I've been
defeated — thwarted — repressed ! Everything drives me
back into myself. There is nothing I can do — I can
only endure and suffer and wait. So all the influences
in my life are negative —

'I was sick with the 'Nay of life
With my lonely soul's refrain !' "

"What is that you are quoting?" asked Mrs. Chan-
ning.

"It's from a poem I wrote," said Corydon.

"Oh, you write poetry?"

"I couldn't say that," was the reply. "I have no
technique — I never studied anything about it."

"But you try sometimes?"

"I find it helps me," said Corydon — "once in a great
while I find lines in my mind ; and I put them together,
so that I can say them over, and remind myself of
things."

"I see," said Mrs. Channing. "Tell me the poem you
quoted."

"I — I don't believe you'd think much of it," said
Corydon, hesitating. "I never expected anybody "

"I'd be interested to hear it," declared her visitor.

So Corydon recited in a low voice a couple of stanzas
which had come to her in the lonely midnight hours.
Thyrsis listened with interest — he had never heard them
before :

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 513

"What matters the tired heart,
What matters the weary brain?
What matters the cruel smart
Of the burden borne again?

I was sick with the Nay of life —
With my lonely soul's refrain;

But the essence of love is strife,
And the meaning of life is pain."

There was a pause. "Do you — do you think that is
worth while at all?" asked Corydon.

"It is evidently sincere," replied Mrs. Channing. "I
think you ought to study and practice."

"I can't make much effort at it "

But the other went on: "What concerns me is the
attitude to life it shows. It is terrible that a young
girl should feel that way. You must not let yourself
get into such a state!"

"But how can I help it?"

"You must have something that occupies your mind !
That is what you need, truly it is ! You've got to stop
thinking about yourself — you've got to get outside
yourself, somehow !"

Thyrsis caught his breath. He could tell from the
tone of the speaker's voice that she was laboring with
Corydon, putting forth all her energies to impress her.
He was tempted to step forward and cry out, "No, no !
That's not the way ! That won't work !"

But instead, he stood rooted to the spot, while Mrs.
Channing went on — "This unhappiness comes from the
fact that you are so self-centred. You must get some
constructive work, my dear, if it's only training your
baby. You must realize that you are not the only

614 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

person who has troubles in the world. Why, I know
a poor washerwoman, who was left a widow with four
children to care for "

And then suddenly Thyrsis heard a voice cry out
in anguish, "Oh, oh ! stop !" He heard his wife spring
up from her chair.

"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Channing.

"I can't listen to you any more !" cried Corydon.
"You don't know what you're saying! — You don't un-
derstand me at all!"

There was a pause. "I'm sorry you feel that," said
Mrs. Channing.

"I had no right to talk to you I" exclaimed the other.
"There's no one can understand! I have to fight
alone!"

At this point Thyrsis went into the kitchen, and made
some noise that they would hear. Then he called, "Are
you there, dearest.'"'

"Yes," said Corydon; and he went out upon the
piazza. He saw her standing, white and tense.

"Are you still talking?" he said, with forced care-
lessness.

And as Mrs. Channing answered "Yes," Corydon
said, quickly, "Excuse me a moment," and went into
the house.

So the poet sat and talked with his guest about the
state of the weather and the condition of the roads ;
until at last her husband arrived, saying that it was
time they were starting. Corydon did not appear
again, and so finally Thyrsis accompanied them out to
their car, and saw them start off. They promised to
come again, but he knew they would not keep that
promise.

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 515

§ 5. He went back to the house, and after some
search ^e found Corydon down in the woods, whither
she had fled to have out her agony.

"Has that woman gone?" she panted, when he came
near.

"Yes, dear," he said. "She's gone."

"Oh !" cried Corydon. "How dared she ! How dared
she!"

"Get up, sweetheart," said Thyrsis. "The ground is
wet."

"She's gone off in her automobile !" exclaimed the
girl, passionately. "She spent last night at a hotel
that charged twelve dollars a day, and then she told
me about her washerwoman ! Now she's gone back to
her beautiful home, with servants and a governess and
a piano and everything else she wants ! And she talked
to me about 'occupation' ! What right had she to come
here and trample on my face?"

"But why did you let her, dearest?"

"How could I help myself? I had no idea "

"But how did you get started!"'

"I've nobody to confide in — nobody !" cried Corydon.
"And she wanted to know about me — she led me on.
I thought she sympathized with me — I thought she
understood !"

"She's a woman of the world, my dear."

"She was just pulling me to pieces! She wanted to
see how I worked ! Don't you see what she was looking
for, Thyrsis — she thought I was material!"

"She only writes about the Greeks," said Thyrsis,
with a smile.

"I'm a horrible example ! I'm neurasthenic and self-
centred — I'm the modern woman ! She read me a long
lecture like that ! I ought to get busy !"

516 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"Dearest !" he pleaded, trying to soothe her.

"Busy"! repeated Corydon, laughing hysterically.
"Busy! I wash and dress and amuse a baby! I get
six meals a day for him, I get three meals for us, and
clean up everything. And the rest of the day I'm so
exhausted I can hardly stand up, and a good part of
the time I'm sick besides. And then, if I think about
my troubles, it's because I've nothing to do !"

"My dear," Thyrsis replied, "you should not have
put yourself at her mercy."

"How I hate her!" cried Corydon. "How I hate
her !"

"You must learn to protect yourself from such peo-
ple, Corydon."

"I won't meet them at all ! I'm not able to face them
— I've none of their weapons, none of their training.
I don't want to know about them, or their kind of life !
They have no souls!"

"It isn't easy for them to understand," said Thyrsis.
"They have never been poor "

"That woman talks about the Greek love of beauty !
What sacrifice has she ever made for beauty — what
agony has she ever dared for it.'' And yet she can
prattle about it — the phrases roll from her! She's
been educated — polished — finished! She's been taught
just what to say! And I haven't been taught, and so
she despises me!"

"It's deeper than that, my dear," he said. "You
have something in you that she would hate instinctively."

"What do you mean.?"

"I've told you before, dearest. It's genius, I think."

"Genius ! But what use is it to me, if it is ? It only
unfits me for life. It eats me up, it destroys me!"

"Some day," he said, "you will find a way to express

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 517

it. It will come, never fear. — But now, dear, be sensi-
ble. The ground is wet, and if you sit there, you will
surely be laid up with rheumatism."

He lifted her up ; but she was not to be diverted.
Suddenly she turned, and caught him by the arms.
"Thyrsis!" she cried. "Tell me! Do you blame me
as she does.? Do you think I'm weak and incompetent.?"

Whatever answer he might have been inclined to make,
he saw in her wild eyes that only one answer was to be
thought of. "Certainly not, my dear !" he said, quickly.
"How could you ask me such a question?"

"Oh, tell me ! tell me !" she exclaimed. And so he had
to go on, and sing the song of their love to her, and
pour out balm upon her wounded spirit.

But afterwards he went alone; and then it was not
so simple. Little demons of doubt came and tormented
him. Might it not be that there was something in the
point of view of the Channings.? He took Corydon at
her own estimate — at the face value of her emotions ;
but might it not be that he was deluding himself, that
he was a victim of his own infatuation.?

He would ponder this; he tried to have it out with
himself for once. What did he really think about it?
What would he have told Corydon if he had told her
the bald truth? But such doubts could not stay with
him for long. They brought shame to him. He was
like a man travelling across the plains, who comes upon
the woman he loves, being tortured by a band of
Apaches ; and who is caught and bound fast, to watch
the proceedings. Would such a man spend his time ask-
ing whether the woman was weak and incompetent?
No — his energies would be given to getting his arms
loose, and finding out where the guns were. He would
set her free, and give her a chance; and then it would

518 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

be time enough to measure her powers and pass judg-
ment upon her.

§ 6. It was a long time before the family got over
that visitation. Corydon burned all Channing's books,
and she wrote a long and indignant letter to Mrs. Chan-
ning, and then burned the letter. Thyrsis never told
her about his conversation with the husband, for he
knew she would never get over that insult. For himself,
he concluded that the Channings were lucky in having
got into a quarrel with them, as otherwise he would
surely have compelled them to lend him some money.

In truth, the advent of some fairy-godmother or
Lady Bountiful was badly needed just then. They had
struggled desperately to keep within the thirty-dollar
limit, but it could no longer be done. Illnesses were
expensive luxuries ; and there was the typwriting of the
book — some twenty dollars so far ; also, there were many
things that happened when one was running a house-
hold— a tooth-ache, or a telegram, or a hot-water bottle
that got a hole in it, or a horse that ran away and
broke a shaft. Little by little the bills they had been
obliged to run up at the grocer's and the butcher's
and the doctor's had been getting beyond the limits
of their monthly check; and to cap the climax, there
came a letter from Henry Darrell, saying that the next
two checks would be the last he could possibly send.

So Thyrsis set to work once more at the shell of that
tough old oyster, the world. He made out a "scenario"
of the rest of his new book, and sent it with the part
he had already done to his friend Mr. Ardsley. Then
for three weeks he waited in dread suspense; until at
last came a letter asking him to call and talk over his
proposition.

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE .519

Mr. Ardsley had been reading all Thyrsis' manu-
scripts, nor had he failed to note the triumph of "The
Genius" abroad. It became at once apparent to Thyrsis
that the new book had scored with him ; it was a book
that could hardly fail, he said — if only it were finished
as it had been begun. Thyrsis «made it clear that he
intended to finish it; no man could gaze into his wild
eyes, and hear him talk of it in breathless excitement,
without realizing that he would die, if need be, rather
than fail.

So then the author went in to have a talk with the
head of the firm. He spread out the treasures of his
soul before this merchant, and the merchant sat and
appraised them with a cold and critical eye. But Thyr-
sis, too, had learned something about trade by this time,
and was watching the merchant; he made a desperate
effort and summoned up the courage to state his de-
mands— ^he wanted five hundred dollars advance, in in-
stallments, and he wanted fifteen per cent, royalty upon
the book. To his wonder and amazement the merchant
never turned a hair at this ; and before they parted
company, the incredible bargain had been made, and
waited only the signing of the contracts !

Thyrsis went out from the building like a blind man
who had suddenly received his sight. It seemed to him
at that moment as if the last problem of his life had
been solved. He sent off a telegram to Corydon to tell
her of the victory, and a letter to Darrell, saying that
he need send no more money — that the path, was clear
before his feet at last!

§ 7. This marked a new stage in the family's finan-
cial progress ; and as usual it was signalized by a grand
debauch in bill-paying* Al^ there was a real table-

620 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

cover for Corydon, and a vase in which she might put
spring-flowers; there were new dresses for the baby,
and more important yet, a new addition to the house.
This was to be a sort of lean-to at the rear, sixteen
feet wide and eight feet deep, and divided into two
apartments, one of which was to be the kitchen, and the
other an extra bed-room. For they were going to keep
a servant!

This was a new decision, to which they had come
after much hesitation and discussion. It would be a
frightful expense — including the cost of the extra food
it would add over thirty dollars a month to their ex-
penses ; but it was the only way they could see the
least hope of freedom, of any respite from household
drudgery. It had been just a year now since they
had set out upon their adventure in domesticity ; and
in that time Corydon figured that she had prepared
two thousand meals for the baby. She had fed each
one of them, spoonful by spoonful, into his mouth ; and
also she had washed two thousand spoons and dishes,
and brushed off two thousand tables, and swept two
thousand floors. And with every day of such drudgery
the heights of music and literature seemed farther away
and more unattainable.

Thyrsis had seen something of servants in earlier
days — ^he had memories of strange figures that during
intervals of prosperity had flitted through his mother's
home. There had been the frail, anfeinic Swedish
woman, who lived on tea and sugar, and afterwards had
gone away and borne nine children, more frail and
anaemic than herself; there had been the stout per-
sonage with the Irish brogue who had dropped the
Christmas turkey out of the window and had not taken
the trouble to go down after it ; there had been the little

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 521

old negress who had gone insane, and hurled the salt-
box at his mother's head. But Thyrsis was hoping that
they might avoid such troubles themselves; he had an
idea that by watching at Castle Garden they might lay
hold upon some young peasant-gii"! from Germany, who
would be untouched by any of the corruptions of civi-
lization. "A sort of Dorothea", he suggested to Cory-
don ; and they agreed that they would search diligently
and find such a "treffliches Madchen", who would be
trusting and affectionate, and would talk in German
with the baby.

So now he spent several days hunting in strange
places ; and at last, in a dingy East-side employment-
ofBce, he came upon his Schatz. She was buxom and
hearty, and fairly oozed good-nature at every pore;
she had only been a week in the country, and was evi-
dently naive enough for any purpose whatever. She
had no golden hair like Dorothea, but was swarthy —
her German was complicated with a Hungarian accent,
and with strange words that one had not come upon in
Goethe and Freitag, and could not find in any dic-
tionary.

Thyrsis helped to gather up her various bags and
bundles, and transported her out to the country. On
the train he set to work to gain her confidence, and was
forthwith entertained with the tale' of all her heart-
troubles. Back in the Hungarian village she had fallen
in love with the son of a rich farmer, quite in Hermann
and Dorothea fashion ; but alas, in this case there had
been no "gute verstdndige Mutter" and no "wurdiger
Pfarrer" — instead there had been a hateful step-mother,
and so the "treffliches Madchen" had had to come away.

They reached the little cottage at last ; and then what
a house-cleaning there was, what scrubbing of floors

522 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and brushing out the cobwebs, and scouring of lamp-
chimneys and scraping of kettles and sauce-pans ! And
what a relief it was for Corydon and Thyrsis to be
able to go off for a walk together, without first having
to carry the baby up to the farm-house ! And how very
poetical it was to come back and discover Dorothea with
the baby in her lap, feeding it a supper of butter-
brod with a slice of raw bacon!

As time went on, alas, it came more and more to seem
that the Dorothea idyl had not been meant to be taken
as a work of realism. The "trefftiches Madchen" was
perhaps too kind-hearted; her emotions were too volum-
inous for so small a house, her personality seemed
to spread all over it. She would sing Hungarian love-
ditties at her work; and somehow calling these "folk-
songs" did not help matters. Also, alas, she distrib-
uted about the house strange odors — of raw onions,
boiled cabbage and perspiration. So, after three weeks,
poor Dorothea had to be sent away — weeping copiously,
and bewildered, over this cruel misfortune. Corydon
and Thyrsis went back again to washing their own
dishes ; being glad to pay the price for quietness and
privacy, and vowing that they would never again try
to "keep a servant".

§ 8. The spring-time had come ; not so much the
spring-time of poets and song-birds, as the spring-time
of cold rains and wind. But still, little by little, the
sun was getting the better of his enemies ; and so with
infinite caution they reduced the quantity of the baby's
apparel, and got him and his "bongie cowtoos" out
upon the piazza.

Meantime Thyrsis was over at his own place, wrest-
ling with the book again. He had told himself that it

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 623

would be easy, now that he was free from the money-
terror. But alas, it was not easy, and nothing could
make it easy. If he had more energy, it only meant
that his vision reached farther, and set him a harder
task. Never in his life did he write a book, the last
quarter of which was not to him a nightmare labor.
He would be staggering, half blind with exhaustion —
like a runner at the end of a long race, with a rival
close at his heels.

Also, as usual, his stomach was beginning to weaken
under the strain. He would come over sometimes, late
in the afternoon, and lay his head in Corydon's lap,
almost sobbing from weariness ; and yet, after he had
eaten a little and helped her with the hardest of her
tasks, he would go away again, and work half through
the night. There was nothing else he could do — there
was no escaping from the thing ; if he lay down to rest,
or went for a walk, it would be only to think about it
the whole time. He would feel that he was not getting
enough exercise, and he would drive himself to some
bodily tasks ; but there was never anything that he
could do, that he did not have the book eating away at
his mind in the meantime. It was one of the calamities
of his life that there was no way for him to play ; all
he could do was to take a stroll with Corydon, or to
tramp over the country by himself.

He finished the book in May ; and he knew that it was
good. He sent it off to Mr. Ardsley, and Mr. Ardsley,
too, declared himself satisfied, and sent the balance of
the money. So Thyrsis sank back to get his breath, and
to put back sonie flesh upon his skeleton. He was wont
to say when he was writing, one could measure his
progress upon a scales ; every five thousand words he
finished cost him a Shylock's price.

524 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

This summer was, upon the whole, the happiest time
they had yet known. The book was scheduled to appear
early in September ; and they had money enough to last
them meantime, with careful economy. Their little home
was beautiful; they planted some sweet peas and roses,
and Thyrsis even began to dig at a vegetable-garden.
Also, it was strawberry-time, and cherry-time was near ;
nor did they overlook the fact that they lived in close
proximity to a peach-orchard. These, perhaps, were
prosaic considerations, and not of the sort which Thyr-
sis had been accustomed to associate with spring-time.
But this he hardly realized — so rapidly was the discip-
line of domesticity bringing his haughty spirit to terms !

He built a rustic seat in the woods, where they might
sit and read; he built a table beside the house, where
the dishes might be washed under the blue sky; and
he perfected an elaborate set of ditches and dykes, so
that the rain-storms would not sweep away their milk
and butter in the stream. He talked of building a pen
for chickens — and might have done so, only he dis-
covered that the perverse creatures would not lay ex-
cept at the time when eggs were cheap and one did not
care so much about them. He even figured on the cost
of a cow, and the possibility of learning to milk it ; and
was so much enthralled by these bucolic occupations
that he wrote a magazine-article to acquaint his strug-
gling brother and sister poets with the fact that they,
too, might escape to the country and live in a home-
made house !

With the article there went a picture of the house,
and also one of the baby, who had been waxing enor-
mous, and now constituted a fine advertisement. The
winter had seemed to agree with him, and the summer
agreed with him even better. Thyrsis would smile now

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 525

and then, thinking of his ideas of martyrdom; it was
made evident that one member of the family was not
minded for anything of the sort. The parents might
become so much absorbed in their soul-problems that
they forgot the dinner-hour ; but one could have set
his watch by the appetite of the baby. Nature had
provided him, among other protections, with a truly
phenomenal pair of lungs ; and whenever life took a
course that was not satisfactory to him, he would roar
his face to a terrifying purple.

He was one overwhelming and incessant outcry for
adventure. He would toddle all day about the place,
getting his "raungies" into all sorts of messes. He was
hard to fit into so small a place, and there were times
when his parents were tempted to wish that some phe-
nomenon a trifle less portentous had fallen to their lot.
But for the most part he was a great hope — a sort of
visible atonement for their sufferings. He at least was
an achievement ; he was something they had done. And
he could not be undone, nor doubted — he put all skep-
ticism to flight. In his vicinity there was no room for
pessimistic philosophies, for Weltschmerz or Karma.

Thyrsis would sit now and then and watch him at
play, and think thoughts that went deep into the mean-
ing of things. Here was, in its very living presence,
that blind will-to-be which had seized them and flung
them together. And it seemed to Thyrsis that somehow
Nature, with her strange secret chemistry, had repro-
duced all the elements they had brought to that union.
This child was immense, volcanic, as their impulse had
been ; he was intense, highly-strung, and exacting —
and these qualities too they had furnished. Curious
also it was to observe how Nature, having accomplished
her purpose, now flung aside her concealments and de-

526 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

vices. From now on they existed to minister to this
new life-phenomenon, to keep it happy and prosperous ;
and she cared not how plain this might become to them
— she feared not to taunt and humiliate them. And
they accepted her sentence meekly, they no longer tried
to oppose her. Her will was become an axiom which
they never disputed, which they never even discussed.
No matter what might happen to them in future, the
Child must go on!

§ 9. Thyksis utilized this summer of leisure to be-
gin a course of reading in Socialism — a subject which
had been stretching out its arms to him ever since he
had made the acquaintance of Henry Darrell. He had
held away from it on purpose, not wishing to compli-
cate his mind with too many problems. But now he had
finished with history, and was free to come back to the
world of the present.

There were the pamphlets that Darrell had given him,
and there was Paret's magazine. Strange to say, the
latter's reckless jesting with the pliilanthropists and
reformers no longer offended Thyrsis — ^he had been
travelling fast along the road of disillusionment. Also,
there was a Socialist paper in New York — "The
Worker" ; and more important still, there was the "Ap-
peal to Reason". Thyrsis came upon a chance refer-
ence to this paper, which was published in a little town
in Kansas, and he was astonished to learn that it
claimed a circulation of two hundred thousand copies
a week. He became a subscriber, and after that the
process of his "conversion" was rapid.

The Appeal was an "agitation-paper". Its business
was to show that side of the capitalist process which
other publications tried to conceal, or at any rate to

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 527

gild and dress up and make presentable. Each week
came four closely-printed newspaper-pages, picturing
horrors in mills and mines, telling of oppression and
injustice, of unemployment and misery, accident,
disease and death. There would be accounts of political
corruption — of the buying of legislatures and courts,
of the rule of "machines" of graft in city and state
and nation. There would be tales of the manners and
morals of the idle rich, set against others of the suf-
ferings of the poor. And week by week, as he read
and pondered, Thyrsis began to realize the absurd in-
adequacy of the placid statement which he had made
to his first Socialist acquaintance — that the solution of
such problems was to be left to "evolution". It be-
came only too clear to him that here was another war
— the class-war ; and that it was being fought by the
masters with every weapon that cunning and greed
could lay hands upon or contrive. In that struggle
Thyrsis saw clearly that his place was in the ranks
of the disinherited and dispossessed.

This was not a difficult decision ; for in the first place
he was one of the disinherited and dispossessed himself ;
and in the next place, even before the "economic screw"
had penetrated his consciousness, he had been a rebel
in his sympathies and tastes. Jesus, Isaiah, Milton,
Shelley — such men as these had been the friends of his
sold; and he had sought in vain for their spirit in
modem society — he had thought that it was dead, and
that he, and a few other lonely dreamers in garrets,
were the only ones who knew or cared about it. But
now he came upon the amazing discovery that this
spirit, driven from legislative-halls and courts of jus-
tice, from churches and schools and editorial sanctums,
had flamed into life in the hearts of the working class.

528 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and was represented in a political party which num-
bered some thirty millions of adherents and cast some
seven million votes !

Beginning nearly a century ago, these workingmen
had taken the spirit of Jesus and Isaiah and Milton
and Shelley, and had worked out a scientific basis for
it, and a method whereby it could be made to count in
the world of affairs. They had analyzed all the evils
of modern society — poverty and luxury, social and po-
litical corruption, prostitution, crime and war; they
had not only discovered the causes of them, but had laid
down with mathematical precision the remedies, and had
gone on to carry the remedies into effect. In every
civilized land upon the globe they were at work as a
political party of protest; they were holding conven-
tions and adopting programs ; they had an enormous
literature, they were publishing newspapers and maga-
zines, many of them having circulations of hundreds
of thousands of copies.

The strangest thing of all was this. Thyrsis was an
educated man — or was supposed to be. He had spent
five years in schools, and nine years in colleges and uni-
versities ; he had given the scholars of the world full op-
portunity to guide him to whatever was of importance.
Also, he had been an omnivorous reader upon his own
impulse; and here he was, at the end of it all — practi-
cally ignorant that this enormous movement existed!

In economic classes in college there had, of course,
been some mention of Socialism ; but this had been of
the Utopian variety, the dreams of Plato and St. Simon
and Fourier. There had been some account of the in-
numerable communities which had sprung up in Amer-
ica— with careful explanation, however, that they had
all proven failures. Also one heard vaguely of Marx

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE i629

and Lassalle, two violent men, whose ideas were still
popular among the ignorant masses of Europe, but
could be of no concern to the fortunate inhabitants of
a free Republic.

And then, after this, to come upon some piece of writ-
ing— such as, for instance, the "Communist Manifesto" !
To read this mile-stone in the progress of civiliza-
tion, this marvellous exposition of the development of
human societies, and of the forces which drive and con-
trol them ; and to realize that two lonely students, who
had cast in their lot with the exploited toilers, had been
able to predict the whole course of political and in-
dustrial evolution for sixty years, and, to foresee and
expound with precision the ultimate outcome of the
whole process — matters of which the orthodox econo-
mists were still as ignorant as babes unborn!

Or to discover the writings of such a man as Karl
Kautsky, the intellectual leader of the modern move-
ment in Germany; such books as "The Social Revolu-
tion", and "The Road to Power" — in which one seemed
to see a giant of the mind, standing in a death-duel
with those forces of night and destruction that still
made of the fair earth a hell ! With what, accuracy he
was able to measure the strength of these powers of
evil, to anticipate their every move, to plan the exact
parry with which to meet them ! To Thyrsis he seemed
like some general commanding an army in battle, with
the hopes of future ages hanging upon his skill. But
this was a general who fought, not with sword and
fire, but with ideas ; a conqueror in the cause of "right
reason and the will of God". He wrote simply, as a
scientist; and yet one could feel the passion behind the
quiet words — the hourly shock of the incessant con-
flict, the grim persistence which pressed on in the face

630 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

of obloquy and persecution, the courage which had been
tested through generations of anguish and toil.

Thyrsi s' mind rushed through these things like a
prairie-fire; and all the time that he read, his wonder
grew upon him. How could he have been kept ignorant
of them.? He was quick to pounce upon the essential
fact, that this was no accident; it was something that
must have been planned and brought about deliberately.
He had thought that he was being educated, when in
reahty he was being held back and fenced off from
truth. It was a world-wide conspiracy — it was that
very class-war which the established order was waging
upon these men and their ideas !

§ 10. It was not difficult for any one to understand
the ideas, if he really wished to. They began with the
fact of "surplus value". One man employed another
man for the sake of the wealth he could be made to pro-
duce, over what he was paid as wages. That seemed
obvious enough ; and yet, what consequences came from
following it up ! Throughout human history men had
been setting other men to work; whether they were
called slaves, or serfs, or laborers, or servants, the
motive-power which had set them to work had been
the desire for "surplus value". And as the process
went on, those who appropriated the profits combined
for mutual protection ; and so out of the study of "sur-
plus value" came the discovery of the "class-struggle".
Human history was the tale of the arising of some
dominating class, and of the struggle of some subject
class for a larger share of what it produced. Human
governments were devices by which the master-class
preserved its power; and whatever may have been the
original purposes of arts and religions, in the end they

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE SSl

had always been seized by the master-class, and used
as aids in the same struggle.

One came to the culmination of the process in modern
capitalist society. Here was a class entrenched in
power, owning the sources of wealth, the huge machines
whereby it was produced, and the railroads whereby it
was distributed, and above all, the financial resources
upon which the other processes depended. One saw this
class holding itself in power by means of the policeman's
club and the militiaman's rifle, by machine-gun and
battle-ship; one saw that, whether by bribery or by
outright force, it had seized all the powers of govern-
ment, of legislatures and executives and courts. One
saw that in the same way it had seized upon the sources
of ideas ; it controlled the newspapers and the churches
and the colleges, that it might shape the thoughts of
men and keep them content. It set up in places of
authority men whose views were agreeable to it — who
believed in the beneficence of its rule and the permanence
of its system ; who would pour out ridicule and contempt
upon those who suggested that any other system might
be conceivable. And so the class-war was waged, not
merely in the world of industry and politics, but also
in the intellectual world.

And step by step, as the processes of capitalism cul-
minated, this war increased in bitterness and intensity.
For, of course, as capital heaped up and its control
became concentrated, the ratio of exploitation increased.
The great mass of labor was unorganized and helpless ;
whereas the masters had combined and fixed their prices ;
and so day by day the cost of living increased, and
misery and discontent increased with it. As capital ex-
panded, and new machines of production were added,
there were more and more goods to sell, and more and

632 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

more difficulty in finding markets ; and so came over-
production and unemployment, panics and crises ; so
came wars for foreign markets — with new opportuni-
ties of plunder for the exploiters and new hardships
and new taxes for the producers. And so was fulfilled
the prophecy of Marx and Engels ; under the pressure
of bitter necessity the proletariat was organizing and
disciplining itself, training its own leaders and thinkers,
forming itself into a world-wide political party, whose
destiny it was to conquer the powers of government in
every land, and use them to turn out the exploiters, and
to put an end to the rule of privilege.

This change was what the Socialists meant by the
"revolution" — the transfer of the ownership of the
means of production ; and it was about that issue that
the class-war was waged. Nothing else but that
counted; without that all reform was futility, and all
benevolence was mockery, and all knowledge was ig-
norance. So long as the means of producing necessities
were owned by a few, and used for the advantage of a
few, just so long must there be want in the midst of
plenty, and darkness over all the earth. Whatever evil
one went out into the world to combat, he came to
realize that he could do nothing against it, because it
was bound up with the capitalist system, was in fact
itself that system. If little children were shut up in
sweat-shops, if women were sold into brothels, it was
not for any fault of theirs, it was not the work of any
devil — it was simply because of the "surplus value"
they represented. If weaker nations were conquered
and "civilized", that, too, was for "surplus value".
And these epidemics of "graft" that broke out upon
the body politic — they were not accidental or sporadic
things, and they were not to be remedied by putting

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 633

any number of men in jail; they were to be understood
as the system whereby an industrial oligarchy had ren-
dered impotent a political democracy, and had fenced
it out from the fields of privilege.

And so also was it with the dullness and sterility that
prevailed in the intellectual world. The master-class
did not want ideas — it only wanted to be let alone ; and
so it put in the seats of authority men who were blind
to the blazing beacon-fires of the future. It would be
no exaggeration to say that the intellectual and cul-
tural system of the civilized world was conducted,
whether deliberately or instinctively, for the purpose
of keeping the truth about exploitation from becoming
clear to the people.

The master-class owned the newspapers and ran them.
It had built and endowed the churches, and taught the
clergy to feed out of its hand. In the same way it had
foimded the colleges, and named the trustees, who in
turn named the presidents and professors. The ordi-
nary mortal took it for granted that because vener-
able bishops and dignified editors and learned college-
professors were all in agreement as to a certain truth,
there must be some inherent probability in that truth;
and never once perceived how the cards were stacked
and the dice loaded — how those clergymen and editors
and professors had all been selected because they be-
lieved that truth to be true, and believed the contrary
falsehood to be false !

And how smoothly and automatically the system
worked ! How these dignitaries stood together, and held
up each other's hands, maintaining the august tradi-
tion, the atmosphere of authority and power! The
bishops praising the editors, and the editors praising
the professors, and the professors praising the bishops !

634. LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

And when the circle was completed, what Use majestS
it seemed for an ordinary mortal to oppose their con-
clusions !

The bishops, one perceived, were "orthodox" — that
is to say they were concerned with barren formulas ;
and they were "spiritual" — they were concerned with
imaginary future states of bliss. The editors were
"safe" and "conservative" — that is to say, their souls
were dead and their eyes were sealed and their god was
property. And when it came to the selecting of the
callege professors, of the men ivho were to guide and
instruct the forthcoming generations — what precau-
tions would be taken then ! What consultations and in-
vestigations, what testimonials and interviews and exam-
inations ! For after all, in these new days, it could be
no easy matter to find men whose minds were sterilized,
who could face without blenching all the horrors of the
capitalist regime ! Who could see courts and congresses
bought and sold ; who could see children ground up in
mills and factories, and women driven by the lash of
want to sell their bodies ; who could see the surplus of
the world's wealth squandered in riot and debauchery,
and the nations armed and drilled and sent out to
slaughter each other in the quest for more. Who could
know that all these things existed, and yet remain in
their cloistered halls and pursue the placid ways of
scholarship ; who could teach history which regarded
them as inevitable; who could care for literature that
had been made for the amusement of slave-drivers, and
art which existed for the sake of art, and not for the
sake of humanity ; who could know everything that was
useless, and teach everything that was uninteresting,
and could be dead at once to the warnings of the past,
and to all that was vital and important in the present.

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 535

§ 11. Not since he had discovered the master-key
of Evolution had Thyrsis come upon any set of ideas
that meant so much to him. It was not that these were
new to him — ^they were the stuff out of which his whole
life had been made; but here they were ordered and
systematized — ^he had a handle by which to take hold
of them. The name of this handle was "the economic
interpretation of history". And its import was that
ideas did not come by hazard, or out of the air, but
were products of social conditions ; and that when one
knew by what method the wealth of any community
was produced, and by what class its "surplus value"
was appropriated — then and then only could one un-
derstand the arts and customs, the sciences and re-
ligions, which that community would evolve.

In the light of this great principle Thyrsis had to
revise aU his previous knowledge ; he had to cast out
tons of rubbish from the chambers of his mind, and
start his thinking life aU over again. Just as, in early
days, he had exchanged miracles and folk-tales for
facts of natural science; so now he saw political insti-
tutions and social codes, literary and artistic canons, and
ethical and philosophical systems, no longer as things
vaKd and excellent, having relationship to truth — ^but
simply as intrenchments and fortifications in the class-
war, as devices which some men had used to deceive and
plunder some other men. What a light it threw upon
philosophy, for instance, to perceive it, not as a search
for truth, but as a search for justification upon the
part of ruling classes, and for a basis of attack upon
the part of subject-classes !

, So, for instance, on the one side one found Rousseau,
and on the other Herbert Spencer. Thyrsis had read
Spencer, and had cordially disliked him for his dogma-

536 LOVE'S iPILGRIMAGE

tism and his callousness; but now he read Kropotkin's
"Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution", and came to
a realization of how the whole science of biology had
been distorted to suit the convenience of the British
ruling-classes. Laissez-faire and the Manchester school
had taught him that "each for himself and the devil take
the hindmost" was the universal law of life; and he
had accepted it, because there seemed nothing else that
he could do. But now, in a sudden flash, he came to
«!ee that the law of life was exactly the opposite ; every-
where throughout nature that which survived was not
ruthless egotism, but co-operative intelligence. The
solitary and predatory animals were now almost en-
tirely extinct ; and even before the advent of man with
his social brain, it had been the herbivorous and gre-
garious animals ■which had become most numerous.
When it came to man, was it not perfectly obvious that
the races which had made civilization were those which
had developed the nobler virtues, such as honor and
loyalty and patriotism .'' And now it was proposed to
trample them into the mire of "business" ; to abandon
the race to a glorified debauch of greed! And this
travesty of science was taught in ten thousand schools
and colleges throughout America — and all because cer-
tain British gentlemen bad wished to work their cotton-
operatives fourteen hours a day, and certain others had
wished to keep land which their ancestors had seized in
the days of William the Conqueror ! Shortly after this
Thyrsis came upon Edmond Kelly's great work, "Gov-
ernment, or Human Evolution" ; and so he realized that
Herbert Spencer's social philosophy had at last been
cleared out of the pathway of humanity. And this was
a great relief to him — it was one more back-breaking
task that he did not have to contemplate!

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 537

§ 12. Then one of his Socialist friends sent him
Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class"; a
book which he read in a continuous ebullition of glee.
Truly it was a delicious thing to find a man who could
employ the lingo of the ultra-sophisticated sociologist,
and use it in a demonstration of the most revolutionary
propositions. The drollery of this was all the more en-
joyable because Thyrsis could never be sure that the
author himself intended it — ^whether his sesquipedalian
irony might not be a pure product of nature, untouched
by any human art.

Veblen's book might have been called a study of the
ultimate destiny of "surplus value"; an economic in-
terpretation of the social arts and graces, of "fashions"
and "fads". Where men competed for the fruit of each
other's labor, the possession of wealth was the sign of
excellence. This excellence men wished to demonstrate
to others ; and step by step, as the methods of pro-
duction and exploitation changed, one might trace the
change in the methods of this demonstration. The
savage chief began with nose-rings and anklets, and the
trophies of his fights ; then, as he grew richer, he would
employ courtiers and concubines, and shine by vicarious
splendor. He would give banquets and build palaces
— the end being always "the conspicuous consumption
of goods".

Later on came those stages when he no longer had to
gain his wealth by physical prowess ; when cunning took
the place of force, and he ruled by laws and religions
and moral codes, and handed down his power through
long lines of descendants. Then ostentation became a
highly specialized and conventionalized thing — its cri-
terion changing gradually to "conspicuous waste of
time". Those characteristics were cultivated which

538 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

served to advertise to the world that their possessor had
never had to earn wealth, nor to do anything for him-
self ; the aristocrat became a special type of being, with
small feet and hands and a feeble body, with special '
ways of walking and talking, of dressing and eating
and playing. He developed a separate religion, a sepa-
rate language, separate literatures and arts, separate
vices and virtues. And fantastic and preposterous as
some of these might seem, they were real things, they
were the means whereby the leisure-class individual took
part in the competition of his own world, and secured
his own prestige and the survival of his line. Some
philosopher had said that virtue is a product like vine-
gar ; and it was a pleasant thing to discover that French
heels and "picture-hats" and course-dinners were pro-
ducts also.

Thyrsis would read passages of this book aloud to
Corydon, and they would chuckle over it together; but
the reading of it did not bring Corydon the same un-
alloyed deUght. In the leisure-class regime, the woman
is a cherished possession — for it is through her that
the abihty to waste both time and goods can best be
shown. So came Veblen's grim and ironic exposition
of the leisure-class woman, an exposition which Cory-
don found almost too painful to be read. For
Corydon's ancestors, as far back as documents could
trace, had been members of that class. They had
left her the frail and beautiful body, conspicuous-
ly useless and dependent; they had left her all the
leisure-class impulses and cravings, all the leisure-class
impotences and futilities to contend with. They had
taught her nothing about cooking, nothing about sew-
ing, nothing about babies, nothing about money ; they
had taught her only the leisure-class dream of "love

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 539

in a cottage" — and she had run away with a poor poet
to try it out !

The depth of these instincts in Corydon was amus-
ingly illustrated by the fact that she always woke up
dull and discouraged, and was seldom really herself
until afternoon ; and that along about ten o'clock at
night, when for the sake of her health she should have
been going to bed, she would be laughing, talking, sing-
ing, ablaze with interest and excitement. Thyrsis
would point this out to her, and please himself by
picturing the role which she should have been filling-
wearing an empire gown and a rope or two of rubies,
and presiding in an opera-box or a salon. Corydon
would repudiate all this with indignation ; but all the
same she never escaped from the phrases of Veblen —
she remained his "leisure-class wife" from that day
forth. Not so very long afterwards they came upon
• Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" ; and Thyrsis shuddered to ob-
serve that of all the heroines in the world's literature,
that was the one which most appealed to her. Nor did
he fail to observe the working of the thing in himself ;
the subtle and deeply-buried instinct which made him
prefer to be wretched with a "leisure-class wife" rather
than to be contented with a plebeian one !

Book XIV
THE PRICE OF RANSOM

The faint grey of dawn was stealmg across the lake;
and still the spell was upon them.

"There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here
Sole in these fields! yet will I not despair."

So she whispered; and he answered her —

"He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep.
Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep.
Some life of men unblest
He knew, which made him droop, and filled his head.
He went; his piping took a troubled sound
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground."

§ 1. In the course of that summer there befell Cory-
don an adventure ; Thyrsis had gone off one day for a
walk, and when he came back she told him about it —
how a young lady had stopped at the house to ask for
a drink of water, and had sat upon the piazza to rest,
and had talked with her. Now Corydon was in a state
of excitement over a discovery.

Whenever Thyrsis met a stranger, it was necessary
for him to go through elaborate intellectual processes,
to find the person out by an exchange of ideas. And
if by any chance the person was insincere, and used
ideas as a blind and a cover, then Thyrsis might never
find him out at all. In other words, he took people at
the face-value of their cultural equipment ; and only
after long and tragic blunderings could he by any
chance get deeper. But with his wife it happened quite
otherwise ; this case was the first which he witnessed, but
the same thing happened many times afterwards. With
her there would be a strange flash of recognition; it
was a sort of intuition, perhaps a psychic thing — who
could tell.'' By some unknown process in soul-chemistry,
she would divine things about a person that he might
have been a life-time in finding out.

It might be a burst of passionate interest, or on the
other hand, of repugnance and fear. And long years
of practice taught Thyrsis that this instinct of hers
was never to be disregarded. Not once in all her life
did he know her to give her affection to a base person ;
and if ever he disregarded her antipathies, he did it to

543

544 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

his cost. Once they were sitting in a restaurant, and a
man was brought up to be introduced by a friend; he
was a person of not unpleasant aspect, courteous and
apparently a gentleman, and yet Corydon flushed, and
could scarcely keep her seat at the table, and would
not give the man her hand. Years after Thyrsis came
upon the discovery about this man, that he made a prac-
tice of unnatural vices.

He came home now to find Corydon flushed with ex-
citement. "She has such a beautiful soul!" she ex-
claimed. "I never met anyone like her. And we just
took to each other; she told me all about herself, and
we are going to be friends."

"Who is she.?" asked Thyrsis.

"She's visiting Mr. Harding, the clergyman at
Bellevue," was the answer.

Bellevue was a town in the valley, on the other side
from the university; it had a Presbyterian church,
whose young pastor Thyrsis had met once or twice in
his tramps about the country. This Miss Gordon, it
seemed, was the niece of an elderly relative, his house-
keeper; she was studying trained nursing, and after-
wards intended to go out as a missionary to Africa.

"She's so anxious to meet you," Corydon went on.
"She's coming up to see me to-morrow, and she's going
to bring Mr. Harding. You won't mind, will you,
Thyrsis.?"

"I guess I can stand it if he can," said Thyrsis,
grimly.

"You mustn't say anything to hurt their feelings,"
said Corydon, quickly. "She's terribly orthodox, you
know; and she takes it so seriously. I was surprised
— I had never thought that I could stand anybody like
that."

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 646

Thyrsis merely grunted.

"I guess ideas don't matter so much after all," said
Corydon. "It's a deep nature that I care about. But
just fancy — she was pained because the baby hadn't
been baptized!"

"You ought to have hid the dreadful truth," said
he.

"I couldn't hide things from her," laughed Corydon.
"But she says I can make a Socialist out of her, and
she'll make a Christian out of me!"

His reply was, "Wait until she discovers the sensuous
temperament !"

But Corydon answered that Delia Gordon had a
sensuous temperament also. "She seemed to me like a
Joan of Arc. Just think of her going away from all
her family, to a station on the Congo River! She told
me all about it — how wretched the people are, and what
the women suffer. She woke up in the middle of thfi
night, and a voice told her to go — told her the name
of the place. And she'd never heard it before, and
hadn't had the least idea of going away!"

Thyrsis was unmoved by this miracle. "I suppose,"
he said, "you'll be hearing voices yourself, and going
with her. Tell me, is she pretty?"

"You wouldn't call her pretty," said Corydon, after
a little thought. "She's just — ^just dear. Oh, Thyrsis,
I simply fell in love with her !"

"You certainly chose an odd kind of an affinity," he
said. "A Presbyterian missionary!"

"It's worse than that," confessed Corydon. "She's
a Seventh-day Adventist."

"Good God! And what may that be?"

"Why, she keeps Saturday instead of Sunday. She
calls it the Sabbath. And she thinks that 'evolution' is

546 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

wicked, and she believes in some kind of a hell! She's
not just sure what kind, apparently."

"You watch out," said he, "or the first thing you
know she'll be baptizing the baby behind your back."

"Would that do any good?" asked Corydon, guile-
lessly.

He laughed as he answered, "It would, from her
point of view."

To which she replied, "Well, if we didn't know it and
the baby didn't, I guess it wouldn't do any harm."

"And it might save him from some kind of a hell !"
added Thyrsis.

§ 2. Miss Goedon came the next morning, Mr.
Harding with her ; and the four sat out under the trees
and talked. She was a girl some three years older than
Corydon, but much more mature; she was short, but
athletic in build, and with a bright personality. Thyr-
sis could see at once those fine qualities of idealism and
fervor which had attracted Corydon; and to his sur-
prise he found that, in addition to her religious virtues,
the Lord had generously added a sense of humor. So
Delia Gordon was really a person with whom one could
have a good time.

The Lord had not been quite so generous with the
Rev. Mr. Harding, apparently. Mr. Harding was
about thirty years of age, tall and finely-built, with a
slight, fair moustache, and a rather girlish complexion.
He was evidently of a sentimental inclination, very sensi-
tive, and a lovable person ; but the sense of humor
Thyrsis judged was underdeveloped. He was inclined
towards social-reform, and had a club for working-
boys in his town, of which he was very proud ; he asked
Thyrsis to come and give a literary talk to these boys,,

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 547

and Thyrsis replied that his \'iews of things were hardly
orthodox. When the clergyman asked for elucidation,
Thyrsis added, with a smile, "I don't believe that Jonah
ever swallowed the whale". Whereupon Mr. Harding
proceeded with all gravity to correct his misapprehen-
sion of this legend.

The fires of friendship, thus suddenly lighted between
the two girls, continued to bum. Delia Gordon came
nearly every day to see Corydon, and once or twice
Corydon went down to the town and had lunch with
her. They told each other all the innermost secrets of
their hearts, and in the evening Corydon would retail
these to Thyrsis, who was thus put in the way to acquire
that knowledge of human nature so essential to a
novehst. DeHa had never been in love, it seemed — ^her
only passion was for savage tribes along the Congo ;
but Mr. Harding had been involved in a heart-tragedy
some time ago, and was supposed to be stiU inconsolable.
Incredible as it might seem, he was apparently not in
love with Delia.

Also, needless to say, the pair did not fail to thresh
out problems of theology. Delia made in due course
the dreadful discovery of the sensuous temperament;
and also she probed to the depths the frightful ocean
of unorthodoxy that was hid beneath the placid sur-
face of Corydon. But strange to say, this did not
repel her, nor make any difference in their friendship.
Thyrsis took that for the sign of a hberal attitude,
but Corydon corrected him with a shrewd observation
— "She's so sure of her own truth she can't believe in
the reality of any other. She knows I'll come to Jesus
with her some day!"

It was a wonderful thing to Thyrsis to see his wife's
happiness just then ; she was like a flower which has

648 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

been wilting, and suddenly receives a generous shower
of rain. It was just what he had prayed for; having
seen all along that her wretchedness was owing to her
being shut up alone with him. So now he did his best
to repress his own opinions, and to let the two friends
work out their problem undisturbed.

"Oh, Thyrsis," Corydon exclaimed to hiai, one night,
"if I could only have her with me, I'd be happy always !"

"Then why don't you get her to stay with you.?"
asked Thyrsis, quickly.

"Ah, but she wouldn't think of it," said Corydon.
"She doesn't really care about anything in the world
but her Congo savages !"

"We might try," said he. "When does she complete
her course.'"'

"Not until the end of the year."

"Well, we can do a lot of arguing in that time. And
when the book is out, we'll have money enough, so that
we can offer to pay her. She might become a sort of
'mother's helper.' "

§ 3. So Thyrsis began a struggle with Jesus and
the Congo savages, for the possession of Delia's soul.
He set to work to interest her in his work ; he gave her
his first novel, which contained no theology at all; and
also "The Hearer of Truth" — the social radicalism of
which he was pleased to see did not alarm her. And
then he gave her the war-novel, and saw with joy how
she was thrilled over that. He laid himself out to make
his purpose and his vision clear to her; and then,
one afternoon, when Corydon had a headache and was
taking a nap, he led her off to a quiet place in the
woods, and set before her all the bitter tragedy of their
lives.

THE PRICE Of RANSOM 549

He pictured the work he had to do, and the loneli-
ness to which this consigned Corydon; he told her of
the horrors they had so far endured, and what effect
these had had upon his wife. He showed her what her
power was — how she could make life possible for both
of them. For she had that magic key which Thyrsis
himself did not possess, she could unlock the treasure-
chambers of Corydon's soul.

But alas, Thyrsis soon perceived that his efforts had
been in vain. Delia was stirred by his eloquence, but
the only effect was to move her to an equally eloquent
account of the sufferings of the natives of the Congo
basin. It was important that he should get his books
written ; but how much more important it was that some
help should be carried to these unhappy wretches!
They never saw any books, they were altogether beyond
his reach; and who was to take the light to them.? She
told him harrowing tales of sick women, beaten and
tortured and burned with ^re to drive the devils out of
them.

Thyrsis met this by attempting to broaden the girl's
social consciousness. He showed her how the waves
of intelligence, beginning at the top, spread to the
lowest strata of society — changing the character of aU
human activities, and affecting the humblest life. He
showed her the capitalist system, and explained how it
worked ; how it reached to the savage in the remotest
comer of the earth, and seized him and made him over
according to its will. It was true, for instance — and
not in any poetic sense, but literally and depionstrably
true — that the fate of the Congo native was determined
in Wall Street, and in the financial centres of London
and Paris and Brussels and Berlin. The essential thing
about the natives was that they represented rubber and

550 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

ivory. And Delia might go there, and try to t.each
them and help them, but she would find that there were
forces engaged in beating them down and destroying
them — forces in comparison with which she was as help-
less as a child. It was true of the Congo blacks, as it
was true of the people of the slums, of the proletariat
of the whole earth, that there was no way to help them
save to overthrow the system which made of them, not
human beings, but commodities, to be purchased and
passed through the profit-mill, and then flung into the
scrap-heap.

But Thyrsis found to his pain that it was impossible
to make these considerations of any real import to
Delia. She understood them, she assented to them ; but
that did not make them count. Her impulses came from
another part of her being. Her savages were naked
and hungry and ignorant and miserable ; and they
needed to be fed and clothed, and more important yet,
to be baptized and saved. She was all the more impelled
to her task by the fact that all the forces of civilization
were arrayed against her. The fires of martyrdom
were blazing in her soul. She meant to throw herself
over a precipice — and the higher the precipice, and the
more jagged the rocks beneath, the greater was the
thrill which the prospect brought her.

§ 4. They went back to the house; as Delia had
arranged to spend the night with them, and as Cory-
don's headache was better, the controversy was con-
tinued far into the evening. Thyrsis took no part in
it, he listened while Corydon pleaded for herself, and
pictured her loneliness and despair.

Delia put her arms about her. "Don't you see,
dear," she argued — "all that is because you are without

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 551

a faith ! You cast out Jesus, and deny him ; and so
how can / help you? If you believed what I do, you
would not be lonely, even if you were in the heart of
Africa."

"But how can I believe what isn't trite?" cried Cory-
don : and so the skeletons of theology came forth and
rattled their bones once more.

A couple of hours must have passed, while Thyrsis
said nothing, but listened to Delia and watched her,
probing deeply into the agonies and futilities of life.
He had given up all hope of persuading her to stay with
them; he thought only of the tragedy, that this noble
spirit should be tangled up and blundering about in the
mazes of a grotesque dogma. And the time came when he
could endure it no more ; something rose up within him,
something tremendous and terrible, and he laid hold
of Delia Gordon's soul to wrestle with it, as never be-
fore had he wrestled with any human soul except
Corydon's.

The truth of the matter was that Thyrsis loved the
rehgious people; it was among them that he had been
brought up, and their ways were his ways. This was
a fact that came to him rarely now, for he was hard-
driven and bitter ; but it was true that when he sneered
at the church and taimted it, he was like a parent who
whips a child he loves. Perhaps Paret had spoken
truly in one of his cruel jests — that when a man has
been brought up religious, he can never really get over
it, he can never really be free.

So now Thyrsis spoke to Delia as one who was him-
self of the faith of Jesus ; he cried out to her that what
she wanted was what he wanted, that all her attitudes
and ways of working were his. And here were mon-
strous evils alive upon the earth — here were aU the

652 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

forces of hell unleashed, and ranging like savage beasts,
destroying the lives of men and women ! And those who
truly cared, those who had the conscience and the faith
of the world in their keeping — they were wasting their
time in disputations about barren formulas, questions
which had no relationship to human life ! Questions of
the meaning of old Hebrew texts that had often no mean-
ing at all, and of folk-tales and fairy-stories out of the
nursery of the race — the problam of whether Jonah
had swallowed the whale, or the whale had swallowed
Jonah — the problem of whether it was on Friday or
Saturday that the Lord had finished the earth. Because
of such things as this, they drove all thinking men from
their ranks, they degraded and made ridiculous the
very name of faith ! As he went on, the agony of this
swept over Thyrsis — until it seemed to him as if he
had the whole Christian Church before him, and was
pleading with it in the voice of Jesus. Here was a new
crucifixion — a crucifixion of civilization ! Thyrsis cried
out in the words, "Oh ye of little faith!" Truly, was
it not the supreme act of infidelity, to make the spirit
of religion, which was one with the impulse of all life —
the force that made the flower bloom and oak-tree tower
and the infant cry for its food — to make it dependent
upon Hebrew texts and Assyrian folk-talcs ! Delia
preached to him about "faith" ; but what was her faith
in comparison with his, which was a faith in all life —
which trusted the soul of man, and reason as part of
the soul of man, a thing which God had put in man to
be used, and not to be feared and outraged.

Then came Deha. She would not admit that her
faith depended upon texts and legends; it was a faith
in the living God. She was not afraid of reason — she
did not outrage it —

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 553

"But you do, you do !" cried Thyrsis. "Your whole
attitude is an outrage to it! You never speak of 'sci-
ence' except as an evil thing. You told Corydon that
'evolution' was wicked!"

"I don't see how evolution can help my faith" —
began the other.

"That's just it!" cried Thyrsis again. "That is
exactly what I mean ! You do not pay homage to truth,
you do not seek it for its own sake ! You require that
it should fit into certain formulas that you have set up
— in other words that it should not interfere with your
texts and your legends ! And what is the result of that
— you have paralyzed all your activities, you have con-
demned your intellectual life to sterility! For we live
in an age of science, we cannot solve our problems ex-
cept by means of it ; the forces of evil are using it, and
you are not using it, and so you are like a child in their
hands ! Not one of the social wrongs but could be put
an end to — child-labor, poverty and disease, prostitu-
tion and drunkenness, crime and war! But you don't
know how, and you can't find out how — simply because
you have thrown away the sharp tools of the intellect,
and filled your mind with formulas that mean nothing !
How can you understand modem problems, when you
know nothing about economics? You have rejected
'evolution' — so how can you comprehend the evolution
of society.'' How can you know that civilization at this
hour is going down into the abyss — dragging you and
your churches and your Congo savages with it.'' I who
do understand these things — I have to go out and fight
alone, while you are shut up in your churches, mumbling
your spells and incantations, and poring over your
Hebrew texts ! And think of what I must suffer, know-
ing as I do that the spirit that animates you — the fervor

554 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

and devotion, the 'hunger and thirst after righteous-
ness'-— ^would banish horror from the earth forever, if
only it could be guided by intelligence !"

§ 5. All this, of course, was effort utterly wasted.
Thyrsis poured out his pleadings and exhortations, his
longing and his pain ; and when he had finished, the girl
was exactly where she had been before — ^just as dis-
trustful of "science", and just as blindly bent upon
getting away to her savages and binding up their
wounds and baptizing them. And so at last he gave up
in despair, and left Delia to go to bed, and went out and
sat alone in the moonlight.

Afterwards, though it was long after midnight,
Corydon came out and joined him. He saw that she
was flushed and trembling with excitement.

"Thyrsis !" she whispered. "That was a marvellous
thing!"

He pressed her hand.

"And all thrown away !" she cried.

"You realized that, did you.'"' he asked.

"I realized many things. Why you set so much
store by ideas, for instance ! I see that you are right
— one has to think straight !"

"It's like a steam-engine," said Thyrsis. "It doesn't
matter how much power you get up, or how fast you
make the wheels go — unless the switches are set right,
you don't reach your destination."

"You only land in the ditch !" added Corydon. "And
that's just the way I felt to-night — she'd take your
argument every time, and dump it into a ditch. And
she'd see it there, and not care."

"She doesn't care about facts at all, Corydon. And
notice this also — she doesn't care about succeeding.

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 555

That's the thing you must get straight — her religion
is a religion of failure ! It comes back to that criticism
of Nietzsche's — it's a slave-morality. The world be-
longs to the devil ; and the idea of taking it away from
the devil seems to be presumptuous. Even if it could
be done, the attempt would be "un spiritual' ; for the
'world' is something corrupt — something that ought
not to be saved. So you see, she's perfectly willing for
the Belgians to have the rubber."

" 'Render unto Csesar the things that are Caesar's' !"
quoted Corydon.

"Yes, and let Csesar spend them on Cleo de Merode.
What she wants is to save the souls of her savages —
to baptize them, and to perish gloriously at the work,
and then be transported to some future life that is
worth while. So you see what the immortality-mongers
do with our morality !"

"Ah!" cried Corydon, swiftly. "But that need not
be so!"

"But it is so !" he answered.

"No, no!" she protested. "You must not say that!
That is giving up — and I felt such a different mood
in you to-night! I wanted to tell you — we must do
something about it, Thyrsis ! It made me ashamed of
my own life. Here I am, failing miserably — and all that
work crying out to be done! I don't think I ever had
such a sense of your power before — the things you
might do, if only you could get free, if only I didn't
stand in your way ! Oh, can't we cast the old mis-
takes behind us, and go out into the world and preach
that message.?"

"But, my dear," said Thyrsis, "that wouldn't appeal
to you always. Your temperament "

"Never mind my temperament !" she cried. "I am sick

556 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

of it, ashamed of it ; I want the world to hear that '
trumpet-call! I want you to break your way into the
churches — to make them listen to you, and realize their
blasphemy of life!"

She caught hold of him and clung to him; he could
feel, like an electric shock, the thrill of her excitement.
He marvelled at the effect his words had produced upon
her — realizing all the more keenly, in contrast with
Delia, what a power of mmd he had here to deal with.
"Dearest," he said, "I must put these things into my
books. You must stand by me and help me to put them
into my books !"

§ 6. Delia Gordon went away to take up her work
in the city ; but for many months thereafter that mis-
sionary impulse stayed with them. They would find
themselves seized with the longing to throw aside every-
thing else, and to go out and preach Socialism with the
living voice. They were stiU immersed in its literature ;
they read Bellamy^s "Looking Backward", and Blatch-
ford's "Merrie England", and Kropotkin's "Appeal to
the Young". They read another book about England
that moved them even more — a volume of sketches called
"The People of the Abyss", by a young writer who was
then just forging to the front — Jack London. He was
the most vital among the younger writers of the time,
and Thyrsis watched his career with eager interest.
There was also not a little of wistful hunger in his
attitude — he had visions of being the next to be caught
up and transported to those far-off heights of popu-
larity and power.

Also, they were kept in a state of excitement by the
Socialist papers and magazines that came to them.
There was a great strike that summei", «nd they fol-

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 557

lowed the progress of it, reading accounts of the dis-
tress of the people. Every now and then the pain of
these things would prove more than Thyrsis could bear,
and he would blaze out in some fiery protest, which, of
course, the Socialist papers published gladly. So little
by little Thyrsis was coming to be known in "the move-
ment". Some of his friends among the editors and pub-
lishers made strenuous protests against this course,
but little dreaming how deeply the new faith had im-
pressed him.

In truth it was all that Thyrsis could do to hold him-
self in ; it seemed to him that he no longer cared about
anything save this fight of the working-class for jus-
tice. He was frightened by the prospect, when he
stopped to realize it ; for he could not write anything
but what he believed, and one could not live by writing
about Socialism. He thought of his war-book, for
instance. It was but two or three months since he had
finished it, and it was his one hope for success and free-
dom ; and yet already he had outgrown it utterly. He
realized that if he had had to go back and do it over, he
could not; he could never beheve in any war again,
never be interested in any war again. Wars were strug-
gles among ruling-classes, and whoever won them, the
people always lost. Thyrsis was now girding up his
loins for a war upon war.

So there were times when it seemed that a literary
career would no longer be possible ' to him ; that he
would have to cast his lot altogether with the people,
and find his work as an agitator of the Revolution.
One day a marvellous plan flashed over him, and he
came to Corydon with it, and for nearly a week they
threshed it over, tingling with excitement. They would
sell their home, and raise what money they could, and

558 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

get themselves a travelling van and a team of horses,
and go out upon the road on a Socialist campaign !

It was a perfectly feasible thing, Thyrsis declared;
they would carry a supply of literature, and would get
a commission upon subscriptions to Socialist papers.
He pictured them drawing up on the main street of
some country town, and ringing a dinner-bell to gather
the people, and beginning a Socialist meetingv He
would make a speech, and Corydon would sell pam-
phlets and books; they had animated discussions as to
whether she might not learn to make a speech also. At
least, he argued, she might sing Socialist songs!

Thyrsis was forever evolving plans of this sort ;
plans for doing something concrete, for coming into
contact with the world of every day. The pursuit of
literature was something so cold and aloof, so com-
fortable and conventional; one never pressed the hand
of a person in distress, one never saw the light of hope
and inspiration kindling in another's eyes. So he would
dream of running a publishing-house or a magazine, of
founding a library or staging a play, of starting a
colony or a new religion. And then, after he had made
himself drunk upon the imagining, he would take him-
self back to his real job. For that summer his only in-
discretions were to buy several thousand copies of the
"Appeal to Reason", and hire the old horse and buggy,
and distribute them over some thirty square miles of
country; also to help to organize a club for the study
of Socialism at the university ; and finaUy, when he
was in the city, to make a fiery speech at a meeting of
some "Christian Sociahsts." Because of this the news-
paper reporters dug out the accounts of his earlier
adventures, and "wrote him up" with malicious banter-
ing. And this, alas — as the publisher pointed out —

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 559

was a poor sort of preparation for the launching of the
war-novel.

Needless to add, the two did not fail to wrestle with
those individuals whom they met. Thyrsis got a col-
lection of pamphlets, judiciously selected, and gave
them to the butcher and the grocer, the store-clerks and
the hack-drivers in the town. But a college-town was
a poor place for Socialist propaganda, as he realized
with sinking heart ; its population was made up of
masters and servants, and there was even more snob-
bery among the. servants than among the masters. The
main architectural features of the place were fraternity-
houses and "eating-clubs", where the sons of the idle
rich disported themselves ; once or twice Thyrsis passed
through the town after midnight, and saw these young
fellows reeling home, singing and screaming in various
stages of intoxication. Then he would think of little
children shut up in cotton-mills and coal-mines, of
women dying in pottery-works and lead-factories ; and
on his way home he would compose a screed' for the
"Appeal to Reason".

§ 7. Anothek victim of their fervor was the Rev.
Mr. Harding, who stopped in to see them several, times
upon his tramps. Thyrsis would never have dreamed
of troubling Mr. Harding, but Corydon found "some-
thing in him", and would go at him hammer and
tongs whenever he appeared. It must have been a
novel experience for the clergyman ; it seemed to fasci-
nate him, for he came again and again, and soon
quite a friendship sprang up between the two. She
would tell Thyrsis about it at great length, and so,
of course, he had to change his ideas about Mr.
Harding.

560 LOVfS PILGRIMAGE

"Don't you see how fine and sensitive he is?" she
would plead.

"No doubt, my dear," said Thyrsis. "But don't
you think he's maybe just a bit timid?"

"Timid," she replied. "But then think of his train-
ing! And think what you are!"

"Yes, I suppose I'm pretty bad," he admitted.

This discussion took place after he and Mr. Harding
had had an argument, in which Thyrsis had remarked
casually that modern civilization was "crucifying Jesus
all over again." And when Mr. Harding asked for
enlightenment, Thyrsis answered, "My dear man, we
crucify him according to the constitution. We teach
the profession of crucifying him. We invest our capital
in the business of crucifying him. We build churches
and crucify him in his own name !"

After which explosion Corydon said, "You let me
attend to Mr. Harding. I understand him, and how
he feels about things."

"All right, my dear," assented Thyrsis. "When I
see him coming, I'll disappear."

But that would not do either, it appeared, for Mr.
Harding was a conventional person, and it was neces-
sary that he should feel he was calling on the head of
the family.

"Then," said Thyrsis, "I'm supposed to sit by and
serve as a chaperon?"

"You're to answer questions when I ask you to,"
Replied Corydon.

Through Mr. Harding they made other acquaint-
ances in Bellevue. There was a Mrs. Jennings, the
wife of the yoxmg principal of the High School ; they
were simple and kindly people, who became fond of
Corydon, and would beg her to visit them. The girl

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 661

was craving for companionship, and she would plead
with Thyrsis to accompany her, and subject himself
to the agonies of "ping-pong" and croquet; and once
or twice he submitted — and so one might have beheld
them, at a lawn-party, hotly pressed by half a dozen
disputants, in a debate concerning the nature of Amer-
ican institutions, and the future of religion and the
home!

Thyrsis seldom took human relationships seriously
enough to get excited in such arguments; but Cory-
don, with her intense and personal temperament, made
an eager and uncomfortable propagandist. How could
anyone fail to see what was so plain to her? And so
she would bring books and pamphlets, and lend them
about. There was a young man named Harry Stuart, a
fine, handsome fellow, who taught drawing at the High
School. In him, also, Corydon discovered possibilities ;
and she repudiated indignantly the idea that his soul-
ful eyes and waving brown hair had anything to do
with it. Harry Stuart was a guileless and enthusiastic
member of the State militia ; but in spite of this sinister
fact, Corydon went at him. She soon had her victim
burning the midnight oil over Kautsky and Hyndman ;
and behold, before the autumn had passed, the ill-fated
drawing-teacher had resigned from the State militia,
and was doing cartoons for the "Appeal to Reason" !

§ 8. Cokydon's excitement over these questions was
all the greater because she was just then making the
discovery of the relationship of Socialism to the prob-
lems of her own sex. Some one sent her a copy of
Charlotte Oilman's "Women and Economics" ; she read
it at a sitting, and brought it to Thyrsis, who thus
came to understand the scientific basis of yet another

562 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

article of his faith. He went on to other books — to
Lester Ward's "Sociology", and to Bebel's "Woman",
and to the works of Havelock Ellis. So he realized that
women had not always been cHnging vines and frail
flowers and other uncomfortable things ; and the hope
that they might some day be interested in other matters
than fashion and sentiment and the pursuit of the male,
was not a vain fantasy and a Utopian dream, but was
rooted in the vital facts of life.

Throughout nature, it appeared, the female was often
the equal of the male ; and even in human history there
had been periods when woman had held her own with
man — when the bearing of children had not been a cause
of degradation. Such had been the case with our racial
ancestors, the Germans ; as one found them in Tacitus,
their women were strong and free, speaking with the
men in the council-halls, and even going into battle if
the need was great. It was only when they came under
the Roman influence, and met slavery and its consequent
luxury, that the Teutonic woman had started upon the
downward path. Christianity also had had a great
deal to do with it ; or rather the dogmas which a Roman
fanatic had imposed upon the message of Jesus.

It was interesting to note how one might trace the
enslavement of woman, step by step with the enslavement-
of labor ; the two things went hand in hand, and stood
or fell together. So long as life was primitive, woman
filled an economic function, and held her own with her
mate. But with slavery and exploitation, the heaping
up of wealth and the advent of the leisure-class regime,
one saw the woman becoming definitely the appendage
of the man, a household ornament and a piece of
property ; securing her survival, not by useful labor,
but by sexual charm, and so becoming specialized as a

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 663

sex-creature. For generations and ages the male had
selected and bred in her those qualities which were most
stimulating to his own desires, which increased in him
the sense of his own dominance; and for generations
and ages he taught the doctrine that the proper sphere
of woman was the home. If he happened to be a Ger-
man emperor, he summed it up in the sneer of "Kuche,
Kinder, Kirche". So the woman became frail and im-
potent physically, and won her success by the only
method that was open to her — ^by finding some male
whom she could ensnare.

Such had been the conditions. But now, in the
present century, had come machinery, and the develop-
ment of woman's labor ; and also had come intelligence,
and woman's discovery of her chains. So there was
the suffrage movement and the Socialist movement.
After the overthrow of the competitive wage-system
and of the leisure-class tradition, woman would no
longer sell her sex-functions, whether in marriage or
prostitution ; and so the sex might cease to survive by
its vices, and to infect the whole race with its intellectual
and moral impotence. So would be set free the enormous
force that was locked up in the soul of woman ; and
human life would be transformed by the impulse of
emotions that were fundamental and primal. So Thyr-
sis perceived the two great causes in which the progress
of humanity was bound up — the emancipation of labor
and the emancipation of woman ; to educate and agitate
and organize for which became the one service that was
worth while in life.

§ 9. The nights were beginning to grow chilly, and
they realized that autumn was at hand, and faced the
prospect of another winter in that lonely cabin. Paret,

664 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

who had come down to visit them, had given it a name —
"the soap-box in a marsh." Thyrsis saw clearly that he
could not settle down to hard work while they were
shut up there. Corydon's headaches and prostrations
seemed to be growing worse, and she could simply not
get through the winter without some help. As the
book was ready, they had some money in prospect, and
their idea was that they would buy a farm with a good
house. So they might keep a horse and a cow and some
chickens ; and there might be some outdoor work for
Thyrsis to do, instead of trudging aimlessly over the
country.

They utilized their spare time by getting the old
horse and buggy, and inspecting and discussing all the
farms within- five miles of them ; an occupation which
put a great strain upon their diverse temperaments.
Thyrsis would be thinking of such matters as roads
and fruit-trees and barns — and above all of prices ;
while Corydon would be concerned with — alas, Corydon
never dared to formulate her vision, even to herself.
She had vague memories of dilettante country-places
with great open fire-places, and exposed beams, and a
broad staircase, and a deep piazza, and above all, a
view of the sunset. Whenever she came upon any vague
suggestion of these luxuries, her heart would leap up —
and would then be crushed by some reference to ten or
fifteen thousand dollars.

Corydon was a poor sort of person to take an inspec-
tion-trip. She would gaze about and say, "There might
be a piazza here" ; and then she would look across the
fields and add, "There'd be a good view if it weren't
for those woods" — and wave the woods away with the
gesture of a duchess. So, of course, the observant

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 665

farmer would add a thousand dollars to the asking-
price of his property.

On the other hand, when Thyrsis with his remorse-
less thoroughness would insist on getting out and m-
specting some dilapidated and forlorn-looking place —
then what agonies would come! Corydon would pass
through the rooms, suffering all the horrors which she
might have suffered in years of occupancy of them.
And there was no use pleading with her to be reserved
in her attitude — she took houses in the same way that
she took people, either loving them or hating them. So,
from an afternoon's driving-trip, she would come home
in a state of exhaustion and despair; and Thyrsis
would have to pledge himself upon oath not to think
of this or that horrible place for a single instant again.

There were times when Thyrsis, too, in spite of his
lack of intuition, felt the atmosphere of evil which hung
about some of these old farms. Having lived for a
year and a half in the neighborhood, and been favored
with the gossip of the washerwoman, and of the farmer's
wife, and of the girl who came to clean house now and
then, they had come to know the affairs of their neigh-
bors— they had got a cross-section of an American
small-farming community. It was in amusing accord
with Thyrsis' social theories that the only two decent
families in the neighborhood inhabited farms of over a
hundred acres. There were several farms of fifty or
sixty acres occupied by tenants, who were engaged, in
plundering them as fast as they could ; and then a host
of little places, of from one to twenty acres, on which
families were struggling pitifully to keep alive. And
with scarcely a single exception, these homes of poverty
were also homes of degradation. Across the way from
Thyrsis was an idiot man; upon the next place lived

666 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

an old man who was a hopeless drunkard, and had one
son insane, and another tubercular ; and then down in
the meadows below the woods lived the Hodges — a name
of direful portent. The father would work as a laborer
in town for a day or two, and buy vinegar and make
himself half insane, and then come home and beat his
wife and children. There were eleven of these latter,
and a new one came each year ; the eldest were thieves,
and the youngest might be seen in midwinter, playing
half-naked before the house. The Hodges were known
to all the neighbors for miles about, and the amount of
energy which each farmer expended in fighting them
would have maintained the whole family in comfort for
their lives.

Thyrsis had travelled enough about the New England
and Middle Atlantic states to know that these conditions
were typical of the small-farming industry in all the
remoter parts. The people with enterprise had moved
West, and those who stayed behind divided and mort-
gaged their farms, and sunk lower and lower into misery
and degradation. This was one more aspect of that
noble system of laissez faire; this was the independent
small-farmer, whose happiness was the theme of all
orthodox economists ! He was, according to the news-
paper editorials, the backbone of American civilization ;
and once every two years, in November, he might be
counted upon to hitch up his buggy and drive to town,
and pocket his two-dollar bill, and roll up a glorious
majority for the Grand Old Party of Protection and
Prosperity.

§ 10. The date of publication of the book had come
at last. It was being generously advertised, under the
imprint of a leading house ; and Thyrsis' heart warmed

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 667

to see the advertisements. This at last, he felt, was
success ; and then the reviews began to come in, and his
heart warmed still more. Here was a new note in cur-
rent fiction, said the critics ; here were power and pas-
sion, a broad sweep and a genuine poetic impulse.
American history had never been treated like this before,
American ideals had never been voiced like this before.
And these, Thyrsis noted, were the opinions of the rep-
resentative reviews — not those of obscure provincial
newspapers. Victory, it seemed, had come to him at
last!

He came up to the metropolis on the strength of these
triumphs ; for he had observed that when one had. a new
book coming out was the psychological moment to at-
tack the magazine-editors. One was a personality then,
and could command attention. It was the height of a
presidential campaign, and the Socialists were making
an impression which was astonishing every one. The
idea had occurred to Thyrsis that somfi magazine might
judge it worth while to tell its readers about this new
and picturesque movement.

To his great delight the editor of "Maclntyre's
Monthly" looked with favor upon the suggestion, and-
asked to see an article at once. So Thyrsis shut him-
self up in a hotel-room and wrote it over night. It
proved to be so full of "ginger" that the editorial staff
of Macintyre's was delighted, and made suggestions as
to another article ; at which point Thyrsis made a des-
perate eifort and summoned up his courage, and in-
sinuated politely that his stuff was worth five cents a
word. The editor-in-chief replied promptly that that
seemed to him proper.

Two hundred dollars for an article ! Here indeed was

668 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

fame ! The author went home, and thought out another
one, and after a week came up to the city with it.

In this new article Thyrsis cited a presidential candi-
date before the bar of public opinion, and propounded
troublesome questions to him. Here was the capital of
the country, heaping itself up at compound interest,
and demanding dividends; here were the people, scrap-
ing and struggling to furnish the necessary profits.
Would they always be able to furnish enough ; and what
would. happen when they could no longer furnish them?
Here were- franchises obtained by bribery, and capi-
talized for hundreds of millions of dollars ; and these
milHons, too, were heaping up automatically. Were
they to draw their interest and dividends forever.? Here
were the machines of production, increasing by leaps
and bounds, and the product increasing still faster, and
all counting upon foreign markets. What would hap-
pen when Japan had its own machines, and India had
its own machines, and China had its own machines?
Again, the processes of production were being per-
fected, and displacing men ; here wfere panics and crises,
displacing yet more men. Already, in England, a good
fourth of the population had been displaced ; and what
were these displaced populations to do? They had
finished making over the earth for the capitalists ; and
now that the work was done, there seemed to be no longer
any place on the earth for them !

Such were the problems of our time, according to
Thyrsis ; and why did the- statesmen of the time have
nothing to say about them? When this article had
been read and discussed, young "Billy" Macintyre him-
self sent for Thyrsis. This was the "real thing", said
he, with his genial bonhomie; the five hundred thousand
subscribers of Macintyre's must surely have these mirth-

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 669

provoking meditations. Also, the editors themselves
needed badly to be stirred up by such live ideas ; there-
fore would Thyrsis come to dinner next Friday evening,
and, as "Billy" phrased it, "throw a little Socialism at
them"?

§ 11. So Thyrsis moved one step higher yet up the
ladder of success. The younger Macintyre occupied half
a block of mansion up on Riverside Drive — ^just across
the street from the town-house of Barry Creston's
father. Thyrsis found himself in an entrance-hall
where wonderful pictures loomed vaguely In a dim, re-
ligious light ; and a silent footman took his cap, and
then escorted him by a soft, plush-covered stairway
to the apartments of "Billy", who was being helped
into a dress-suit by his valet. Thyrsis, alas, had no
dress-suit, and no valet to help him into it, but he sat
on the edge of a big leather chair and proceeded to
"throw a little Socialism" at his host. Then they went
down stairs, and there were Morris and Hemingway,
of the editorial staff, and "Buddie" Comings, most pop-
ular of novelists, and "Bob" Desmond, most famous of
illustrators. And a little later on came Macintyre the
elder, who had also been judged to stand in need of
some Socialism.

Macintyre the elder was white-haired and rosy-
cheeked. He had begun life as an emigrant-boy,
running errands for a book-shop. In course of time he
had become a partner, and then had started a cheap
magazine for the printing of advertisements. From
this had come the reprinting of cheap books for pre-
miums ; until now, after forty years, Maclntyre's was
one of the leading publishing-concerns of the country.
Recently the important discovery had been made that

670 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

the printing of half-inch advertisements headed "FITS"
and "OBESITY" prevented the securing of full-page
advertisements about automobiles. The former kind
was therefore being diverted to the religious papers of
the country, whose subscribers were now getting the
"blood of the lamb" diluted with twenty-five per cent,
alcohol and one and three-fourths per cent, opium.
But such facts were not allowed to interfere with the
optimistic philosophy of "Macintyre's Monthly".

The elder Macintyre seemed to Thyrsis the most
naive and lovable old soul he had encountered in many
a year. When he espied Thyrsis, he waited for no pre-
liminaries, but went up to him as he stood by the fire-
place, and put an arm about him, and led him ofi' to a
seat by the window. "I want to talk to you," said he.

"My boy," he went on, "I read that article of yours."

"Which one.?" asked Thyrsis.

"The last one. And you know, Billy's got to stop
putting things like that in the magazine !"

"What !" cried Thyrsis, alarmed.

"I won't have it! He must not print that article!"

"But he's accepted it!"

"I know. But he should have consulted me."

"But — but I wrote it at his order. And he promised
to pay me "

"Oh, that's all right," said the old gentleman, with
a genial smile. "We'll pay for it, of course."

There was a moment's pause, while Thyrsis caught
his breath.

"My boy," continued the other, "that's a terrible
article !"

"Um," said the author — "possibly."

"Why do you write such things?"

"But isn't it true, sir?"

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 571

Mr. Macintyre pondered. "You know," he said, "I
think you are a very clever fellow, and you know a lot ;
much more than I do, I've no doubt. But what I don't
understand is, why don't you put it into a book?"

"Into a book.'"' echoed Thyrsis, perplexed.

"Yes," explained the other — "then it won't hurt any-
body but yourself. Why should you try to get it into
my magazine, and scare away my half-milUon sub-
scribers ?"

§ 12. Thet went in to dinner, which was served upon
silver-plate, by the light of softly-shaded candles; and
while the velvet-footed waiters caused their food to ap-
pear and disappear by magic, Thyrsis fulfilled his mis-
sion and '.'threw Socialism" at the company.

The company had its guns loaded, and they went
at it hot and heavy. The editors wanted to know about
"the home" under Socialism ; to which Thyrsis made re-
tort by picturing "the home" under capitalism. They
wanted to know about liberty and individuality under
Socialism; and so Thyrsis discussed the liberty and
individuality of the hundred thousand wage-slaves of
the Steel Trust. They sought to tangle him in discus-
sions as to the desirability of competition, and the im-
possibility of escaping it ; but Thyrsis would bring them
back again and again to the central fact of exploita-
tion, which was the one fact that counted. They in-
sisted upon knowing how this, that, and the other thing
would be done in the Cooperative Commonwealth; to
which Thyrsis answered, "Do you ask for a map of
heaven before you join the Church?"

It was "Billy" Macintyre who brought up a some-
what delicate question; how would such an institution
as "Macintyre's Monthly" be run under Socialism?

572 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Thyrsis replied by quoting Kautsky's formula: "Com-
munism in material production, Anarchism in intellect-
ual". He showed how the state might print and bind
and distribute, while men in "free associations" might
edit and publish. But one could not get very far in
this exposition, because of the excitement of the elder
Macintyre. For the old gentleman was like a small
boy who is being robbed of his marbles ; if there had
been a mob outside his publishing-house, he could not
have been more agitated. He took occasion to state,
with the utmost solemnity, that he disapproved of such
discussions ; and "Billy", who sat between him and
Thyrsis, had to interfere now and then and soothe the
"pater" down.

Mr. Macin tyre's views on the subject of capitalism
were simple and easy to understand. There could be
nothing really wrong with a system which had brought
so many great and good men into control of the coun-
try's affairs. Mr. Macintyre knew this, because he had
played golf with them all and gone yachting with them
all. And this was a perfectly genuine conviction ; if
there had been the slightest touch of sham in it, the
old gentleman would have been more cautious in the
examples he chose. He would name man after man
who was among the most notorious of the country's
"malefactors of great wealth" — ^men whose financial
crimes had been proven beyond any possibility of doubt-
ing. He would name them in a voice overflowing with
affection and admiration, as benefactors of humanity
upon a cosmic scale ; and of course that would end the
argument in a gale of laughter. When the elder Mac-
intyre entered the discussion, all the rest of the com-
pany moved forthwith to Thyrsis' side, and there were
six Socialists confronting one business-man. And this

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 573

was a very puzzling and alarming thing to the old
gentleman — his son and his magazine were getting
away from him, and he did not know what to make
of the phenomenon !

§ 13. Thyrsis judged that the tidings must have
got about that there was a new "lion" in town ; for a
couple of days after this he was called up by Comings,
most popular of novelists, who asked him to have
luncheon at the "Thistle" club. And when Thyrsis
went, Comings explained that Mrs. Parmley Patton had
read his book, and was anxious to meet him, and re-
quested that he be brought round to tea. The other
was tactless enough to let it transpire that he knew
nothing about Mrs. Patton ; but Comings was too tact-
ful to show his surprise. Mrs. Patton, he explained,
was socially prominent — was looked upon as the leader
of a set that went in for intellectual things. She was
interested in social reform and woman's suffrage, and
was worth helping along ; and besides that, she was a
charming woman — Thyrsis would surely find the ad-
venture worth while. Then suddenly, while he was listen-
ing, it flashed over Thyrsis that he had heard of Mrs.
Patton before ; the lady was in mourning for her
brother, and Corydon had recently handed him a "so-
ciety" item, which told of some unique and striking
"mourning-hosiery" which she was introducing from
Paris. '

Thyrsis in former days might have been shy of this
phenomenon ; but at present he was a collecting econo-
mist on the look-out for specimens, and so he said he
would go. He met Comings again at five o'clock, and
they strolled out Fifth Avenue together to Mrs. Patton's
brown-stone palace. Thyrsis observed that his friend

674. LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

had been cansiderate enough to omit his afternoon
change of costume, and for this he was grateful.

Mrs. Patton was still in mourning, a filmy and dia-
phanous kind of mourning, beautiful enough to placate
the angel Azrael himself. A filmy and diaphanous
creature was Mrs. Patton also — one could never have
dreamed of so exquisite a black butterfly. She was very
sweet and sympathetic, and told Thyrsis how much she
had liked his book — so that Thyrsis concluded she was
not half so bad as he had expected. After all, she
might not have been to blame for the hosiery story — ^it
might even have been a lie. He reflected that the yellow
journals no doubt lied as freely about young leaders
of intellectual sets in "society" as they did about starv-
ing authors.

[ Mrs. Patton wanted to know about Socialism, and
sighed because it seemed so far away. She made several
remarks that showed real intelligence — and this was
startling to Thyrsis, who would as soon have expected
intelligence from a real butterfly. He. got a strange im-
pression of a personality struggling to get into con-
tact with life from behind a wall some ten million dol-
lars high. Mrs. Patton had three young children, and
her husband was one of the "Standard Oil crowd" ; she
complained to Thyrsis that "Parmy" — so she referred
to the gentleman — was always in terror over her
vagaries.

It was a new discovery to the author that the very
rich might live under the shadow of fear, quite as much
as the very poor. Their wealth made them a target for
newspaper satire, so that they dared not depart from
convention in the slightest detail. Mrs. Patton told how
once she had ventured to romp for a few minutes with
some childrea on the grounds of the "Casino", and the

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 575

next day all the world had read that she was introduc-
ing "tag" as a diversion for the Newport colony.

There came other callers, both women and men ; Percy
Ambler, man of fashion and dilettante poet ; and with
him little Murray Symington, who wrote the literary
chat for "Knickerbocker's Weekly", and was therefore
a power to be propitiated. There came Blanchard, the
young and progressive publisher of the "Beau Monde",
a weekly whose circulation rivalled that of "Macin-
tyre's". There came also young Macklin, Mrs. Patton's
nephew, with his monocle and his killing drawl. Macklin
came by these honestly, having been brought up in
England ; but Thyrsis did not know that — ^he only
heard the young gentleman's passing reference to his
yacht, and to his passion for the poetry of Stephane
Mallarme ; and so he had it in for Macklin. Thyrsis
had got involved in a serious discussion with Mrs. Pat-
ton and Symington, and was in the act of saying that
the social problem could not be much longer left un-
solved; and then he chanced to turn, and discovered
young Macklin, surveying him with elaborate super-
ciliousness, and asking with his British drawl, "Aw —
I beg pawdon — ^but what do you mean by the social
problem?" And Thyrsis, with .a quick glance at him,
answered, "I mean you." So Macklin subsided; and
Thyrsis learned afterwards that his remark was going
the rounds, being considered to be a mot. It appeared
the next week in the columns of a paper devoted to
"society" gossip; and many a literary reputation had
been made by a lesser triumph than that.

Thyrsis got new light upon the making of reputa-
tions, when he looked into the next issue of "Knicker-
bocker's Weekly". There he found that Murray Sym"<
ington had devoted no less than three paragraphs ta

516 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

his personality and his book. It was all "sprightly"
— that was Murray's tone — but also it was cordial;
and it referred to Thyrsis' earlier novel, "The Hearer
of Truth", as "that brilliant piece of work". Thyrsis
read this with consternation — recalling that when the
book had come out, not two years ago, "Knickerbocker's
Weekly" had referred to it as a "preposterous concoc-
tion". Could it be true that an author's work was
"preposterous" while he was starving in a garret, and
became "brilliant" when he was found in the drawing-
room of Mrs. "Parmy" Patton ?

S 14. Thyhsis went on to penetrate yet deeper into
these mysteries ; there came a call from Murray Sym-
ington, to say that Mrs. Jesse Dyckman wanted him to
dinner. Jesse Dyckman he recognized as the name of
one of the most popular contributors to the magazines
— his short stories of Fifth Avenue life were the delight
of the readers of the "Beau Monde".

"But I can't go to dinner-parties with women !" pro-
tested Thyrsis. "I don't dress !"

Murray took that message; but in a few minutes he
called up again. "She says she doesn't care whether
you dress or not."

"But then, I don't eat!" protested Thyrsis, who had
recently discovered Horace Fletcher.

"I know that won't count," said the other, laughing.
"She doesn't want you to eat — she wants you to talk."

Mrs. Jesse Dyckman inhabited an apartment in a
"studio-building" not far from Central Park ; and here
was more luxury and charm — a dining-room done in
dark red, with furniture of some black wood, and
candles and silver and cut glass, quite after the fashion
of the Macintyres. Thyrsis was admitted by a French

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 677

maid-servant; and there was Mrs. Dyckman, resplend-
ent in white shoulders and a necklace of pearls; and
there was Dyckman himself, even more prosperous and
contented-looking than his pictures, and even more bril-
liant and cynical than his tales. Also there was his ■
sister, Mrs. Partridge, the writer of musical comedies ;
and a Miss Taylor, who filled the odd corners of the
magazines with verses, which Corydon had once de-
scribed as "cheap cheer-up stuff".

So here was the cream of the "literary world" ; and
Thyrsis, as he watched and listened to it, was working
out the formula of magazine success. Mrs. Dyckman
sat next to him, displaying her shoulders and her cul-
ture ; it seemed to him that she must have spent all her
spare time picking up phrases about the books and
pictures and plays and music of the hour, so as to be
ready for possible mention of them at her dinner-par-
ties. She had opinions on tap about everything;
opinions just enough "advanced" to be striking and
original, and yet not too far "advanced" for good
form. Jesse Dyckman's short stories were the sort in
which you read how the hero handled his cigarette, and
were told that the heroine was clad in "dimity en prin-
cesse". You learned the names of the latest fashion-
able drinks, and the technicalities of automobiles, and
met with references to far-off ami intricate standards
of social excellence.

To Thyrsis it appeared that he could see before him
the whole career of such a man. He had trained him-
self by years of apprenticeship in snobbery ; he had
studied the fashions not only in costume and manners,
but also in books and opinions. He had been educated
in a "fraternity", and had chosen a wife who had been
educated in a "sorority" ; they had set up in this apart-

578 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

ment, with silver service and three French servants, and
proceeded to give dinners, and cultivate people who
"counted." And so had come the pleasant berth with
the "Beau Monde" ; one or two stories every month, and
one thousand dollars for each story — as one might read
in all newspaper accounts of the "earnings of authors".

The "Beau Monde" might have been described as a
magazine for the standardizing of the newly-rich. A
group of these existed in every town in the country,
and had their "society" in every little city. They
would come to New York and put up at expensive
hotels, and get their education in theatres and opera-
houses and "lobster-palaces" ; in addition they had this
weekly messenger of good form. In its advertising-
columns one read of the latest things in cigarettes and
highballs and haberdashery and candies and autos ;
and in its reading-matter one found the leisure-class
world, and the leisure-class idea of all other worlds.
Young Blanchard himself was in the most "exclusive"
society ; and if one stayed close to him, one might
worm his way past the warders. Among the regular
contributors to the "Beau Monde" and to "Macin-
tyre's", there were a dozen men who had risen by this
method ; and some of them had been real writers at the
outset — had started with a fund of vigor, at least. But
now they spent their evenings at dinner-parties, and
their days lounging about in two or three expensive
cafes, reading the afternoon papers, exchanging gossip,
and acquiring the necessary stock of cynicism for their
next picture of leisure-class life.

It was what might have been described as the "court
method" of literary achievement. The centre of it was
the young prince who held the purse-strings ; and the
court was a coterie of bookish men of fashion and rich

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 579

women whose husbands were occupied in the stock-mar-
ket. They set the tone and dispensed the favors; one
who stood in their good graces would be practically im-
mune to criticism, no matter how seedy his work might
come to be. Nobody liked to "roast" a man with whom
he had played golf at a week-end party ; and who could
be so impolite as to slight the work of a lady-poetess
whom he had taken in to dinner?

§ 15. Thyrsis studied these people, and measured
himself against them. He was not blinded by any
vanity; he knew that it would not have taken him a
week to turn out a short story which would have had
the requisite qualities for Macintyre's — which would
have been clever and entertaining, would have had gen-
uine sentiment, and as large a proportion of sincerity
as the magazine admitted. He could have suggested
that he thought it was worth five hundred dollars, and
"Billy" Macintyre would have nodded and sent him a
check. And then he could have moved up to town, and
got a frock-coat, and paid another call upon Mrs.
"Parmy" Patton. Then his friend Comings would have
put him up for the "Thistle", he would have got to
know the men who made literary opinion, and so his
career would have been secure.

Nor need he have made any apparent break with his
convictions. In "society" one met all sorts of eccen-
trics— "babus" and "yogis". Christian Scientists, spirit-
ualists and theosophists, Fletcherites, vegetarians and
"raw-fooders". And there would be ample room for his
fad — it was quite "English" to be touched with So-
cialism. All that one had to do was to be entertaining
in one's presentation of it, and to confine one's self to

580 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

its literary aspects — not setting forth plans for the ex-
propriation of the house of Macintyre !

Thyrsis had one grievous handicap, of course. He
would have had to keep his wife and child in the back-
ground; for Corydon, alas, would not have scored as a
giver of dinner-parties. From a woman like Mrs. Jesse
Dyckman, skilled in intellectual fence, and merciless to
her inferiors, Corydon would have turned tail and fled.
Thyrsis was able to sit by and let Mrs. Dyckman wave
the plumes of her wit and spread the tail-feathers of her
culture before his astonished eyes, and at the same time
occupy his mind with studying her, and working out
her "economic interpretation". But Corydon took life
too intensely, and people too personally for that.

But she would have let him go, if he had told her that
it was best. So why should he not do it — why should
he turn his back upon this opportunity, and return
to the "soap-box in a marsh" to wrestle with loneliness
and want? The fact of the matter was that the thing
which seemed so easy to his intellect, was impossible to
his character. Thyrsis could not have anything to do
with these people without hypocrisy ; merely to sit and
talk pleasantly with them was to lie. They were to him
the enemy, the thing he was in hfe to fight. And he
hated all that they stood for in the world — he hated
their ideas and their institutions, their virtues as well
as their vices.

He had been down into the bottom-most pit of
hell, and the sights that he had seen therd had withered
him up. How could he derive enjoyment from silks and
jewels, from rich foods and fine wines, when he heard
in his ears the cries of agony of the millions he had
left behind him in that seething abyss .'' And should
he trample upon their faces, as so many other'; h A

THE PRICE OF RANSOM 581

trampled? Should he make a ladder of their murdered
hopes, to climb out to fame and fortune? Not he!

It seemed to him sometimes, as he thought about it,
that he alone, of all men living, had power to voice the
despair of these tortured souls. Others had been down
into that pit, and had come out alive ; but who was there
among them that was an artist; that could forge his
hatred into a weapon, sharp enough and stout enough
to be driven through the tough hide of the world of
culture ? To be an artist meant to have spent years and
decades in toil and study, in disciplining and drilling
one's powers ; and who was there that had descended
into the social inferno, and had come back with strength
enough to accomplish that labor?

So it seemed to him that he was the bearer of a gos-
pel, that he had to teach the world something it could
otherwise not know. He had tried out upon his own
person, and upon the persons of his loved ones, the
effects of poverty and destitution, of cold and hunger,
of solitude and sickness and despair. And so he knew,
of his own knowledge, the meaning of the degradation
that he saw in modern society — of suicide and insanity,
of drunkenness and vice and crime, of physical and
mental and moral decay. He knew, and none could dis-
pute him ! Therefore he must nerve himself for the
struggle ; he must deliver that message, and pound home
that truth. He must keep on and on — in defiance of
authority, in the face of all the obloquy and ridicule
that the prostitute powers of civilization could heap
upon him. He must live for that work, and die for it —
to make real to the thinking world the infamies and the
horrors of the capitalist rSgime,

Book XV
THE CAPTIVE FAINTS

"Too quick despairer, wherefore mlt thou go?
Soon mil the high Midsmnmer pomps come on."

"Do you remember how you used to tell me that?"
she whispered. "Hoping — always hoping!"

"And always young!" he added.

"How did I keep so?" she said, with wonder in her
voice; and he read —

"Thou hearest the immortal chants- of old! —
Putting his sickle to the perilous grain

In the hot corn-field of the Phrygian king,
For thee the Lityerses-song again

Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing!"

Then a smile of mischief crossed her face, and she
asked, "Which Daphnis?"

§ 1. Thyrsis came back to his home in the country,
divided between satisfaction over the four hundred
dollars worth of booty he had captured, and a, great
uneasiness concerning his novel. It had had with the
critics all the success that he could have asked, but
unfortunately it did not seem to be selling. Already
it had been out three weeks, and the sales had been only
a thousand copies. The publisher confessed himself dis-
appointed, but said that it was too early to be certain ;
they must allow time for the book to make its way, for
the* opinions of the reviews to take effect.

And so, for week after week, Thyrsis watched and
hoped against hope — the old, heart-sickening experi-
ence. In the end he came to realize that he had achieved
that most cruel of all literary ironies, the succes
d'esthne. The critics agreed that he had written a
most unusual book ; but then, the critics did not really
count — they had no way of making their verdict ef-
fective. What determined success or failure was the
department-store public. It would take a whim for a
certain novel; and when a novel had once begun to
sell, it would be advertised and pushed to the front,
and everything else would give way before it, quite re-
gardless .of what the critics had said. A book-review
appeared only once, but an advertisement might ap-
pear a score of times, and be read all over the country.
So the public would have pounded into its consciousness
the statement that "Hearts Aflame", by Dorothy
Dimple, was a masterpiece of character-drawing, full

585

586 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

of thrilling incident and alive with pulsing passion.
The department-store pubUc, which was not intelligent
enough to distinguish between a criticism and an ad-
vertisement, would accept all these opinions at their
face-value. And that was success; even the critics
bowed to it in the end — as you might note by the change
in their tone when they came to review the next work
by this "popular" novelist.

So Thyrsis faced the ghastly truth that another year
and a half of toiling and waiting had gone for nothing
— the heights of opportunity were almost as far away
as ever. He had to summon up his courage and nerve
himself for yet another climb ; and Corydon would have
to face the prospect of another winter in the "soap-
box in a marsh".

It was now November, and Thyrsis had written noth-
ing but Socialist manifestoes for six months. He was
restless and chafing again ; but living in distress as they
were, he could not get his thoughts together at all.
He must have been a trying person to live in the house
with at such a time. "You ask me to take love for
granted," said Corydon to him once; "but how can I,
when your every expression is contradictory to love?"

How could he explain to her his trouble? Here again
was the pressure of that dreadful "economic screw", that
was crushing their love, and all beauty and joy and
hope in their hearts. They might fight against it with
all the power of their beings; they might fall down
upon their knees together, and pledge themselves with
anguish in their voices and tears in their eyes ; but still
the remorseless pressure would go on, day and night,
week after week, without a moment's respite.

There was this little house, for instance. It was all
that Thyrsis wanted, and all that he would ever have

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 587

wanted; and yet he could not be happy in it, because
Corydon was not happy in it. He must be plotting and
planning and worrying, straining every nerve to get to
another house; he might not even think of any other
possibility — that would be treason to her. So always
it seemed — ^he had to turn his face a way that he did
not wish to travel, he had to go on against every in-
stinct of his own nature. His love for Corydon was
such that he would be ashamed whenever his own in-
stincts showed themselves. But then he would go alone,
and try to do his work, and then discover the havoc this
had wrought in his own being.

Just now the tension had reached the breaking point ;
the craving for solitude and peace was eating him up.

"What is it that you want?" asked Corydon, one
day.

"I want to be where I don't have to see anybody," he
cried. "I want to rough it in a tent, as I did once be-
fore."

"But it's too late to go to the Adirondacks, Thyrsis !"

"I know that," he said. "But there are other places."

He had heard of one in Virginia — ^in that very Wil-
derness of which he had written so eloquently, but had
never seen. "Isn't there some one who could come and
stay with you.''" he pleaded.

"I don't know," replied Corydon. But the next
day, as fate would have it, there came a letter from
Delia Gordon, saying that she had finished a certain
stage of her study-course, and was tired out and in
fear of break-down. So an invitation was sent and ac-
cepted, and Thyrsis secured the respite which he craved.

And so behold him as a hermit once more, settled in
a deserted cabin not far from the battle-field of Spot-
sylvania. He had got rid of the vermin in the cabin

588* LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

by burning sulphur, and had stocked his establishment
with a canvas-cot and a camp-stool and a lamp and an
oil-can, and the usual supply of beans and bacon and
rice and corn-meal and prunes. Also he had built him-
self a rustic table, and unpacked a trunkful of blankets
and dishes and writing-pads and books. So once more
his life was his own, and a thing of delight to him.

He had promised himself to live off the country, as
he had before ; but the principal game here was the
wild turkey, and the wild turkey proved itself a shy
and elusive bird. It was not occupied with meditations
concerning literary masterpieces ; and so it had a great
advantage over Thyrsis, who would forget that he had
a gun with him after the first half-hour of a "hunt".

§ 2. It had now become clear to Thyrsis that he
had nothing more to expect from his novel ; it had sold
less than two thousand copies, which meant that it had
not earned the money which had already been advanced
to him. But all that was now ancient history — the en-
trenchments and graveyards of the Wilderness battle-
field were not more forgotten and overgrown with new
life than was the war-book in Thyrsis' mind. He had
had enough of being a national chronicler which the
nation did not want ; he had come down to the realities
of the hour, to the blazing protest of the new Revolu-
tion.

For ten years now Thyrsis had been playing at the
game of professional authorship ; he had studied the
literary world both high and low, and had seen enough
to convince him that it was an impossible thing to pro-
duce art in such a society. The modern world did not
know what art was, it was incapable of forming such

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 589

a concept. That which it called "art" was fraud and
parasitism — its very heart was diseased.

For the essence of art was unselfishness ; it was an
emotion which overflowed, and which sought to com-
municate itself to others from an impulse of pure joy.
It was of necessity a social thing; the supreme art-
products of the race had been, like the Greek tragedy
and the Gothic cathedral, a result of the labor of a
whole community. And what could the modern man,
a solitary and predatory wolf in the wilderness of
laissez faire — ^what could he conceive of such a state
of soul.'' What would happen to a man who gave him-
self up to such a state of soul, in a community where
the wolf -law and the wolf -customs prevailed.''

A grim purpose had been forming itself in Thyrsis'
mind. He would suppress the artist in himself for the
present — he would do it, cost whatever agony it might.
He would turn propagandist for a while ; instead of
scattering his precious seed in barren soil, he would set
to work to make the soil ready. There was seething in
his mind a work of revolutionary criticism, which would
sweep into the rubbish-heap the idols of the leisure-
class world.

It was his idea to go back to first principles ; to study
the bases of modern society, and show how its customs
and institutions came to be, and interpret its art as a
product of these. He would show what the modern
artist was, and how he got his living, and how this
moulded his work. He would take the previous art-
pefiods of history and study them, showing by what
stages the artist had evolved, and so gaining a stand-
point from which to prophesy what he would come to be
in the future. Only once had an attempt ever been
made to apply to questions of art the methods of

590 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

science — in Nordau's "Degeneration". But then Nor-
dau's had been pseudo-science — three-quarters imperti-
nence and conceit. The world still waited to understand
its art-products in the light of scientific Socialism.

Such was the task which Thyrsis was planning. It
would mean years of study, and how he was to get the
means to do it, he could not guess. But he had his
mind made up to do it, though it might be the last
of his labors, though everything else in his life might
end in shipwreck. He went about all day, possessed
with the idea; it would be a colossal work, an epoch-
making work — it would be the culmination of his ef-
forts and the vindication of his claims. It would
save the men who came after him ; and to save the men
who came after him had now become the formula of
his life.

§ 3. THYasis would come back from a sojourn such
as this with all his impulses of affection and sympathy
renewed ; he would have had time to miss Corydon, and
to realize how closely he was bound to her. He would
be eager to tell her all his adventures, and the wonder-
ful plans which he had formed.

But this time it was Corydon who had adventures
to narrate. He realized as soon as he saw her that she
had something upon her mind ; and at the first occasion
she led him off to his own study, and shut the door. He
got a fire going, and she sat opposite him and gazed
at him.

"Thyrsis," she said, "I hardly know how to begin."

It was all very formal and mysterious. "What is it,
dear?" he asked.

"It's something terrible," she whispered. "I'm afraid
you're going to be angry."

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 691

"What is it?" he repeated, more anxiously.

"I was angry myself, at first," she said; "but I've
got over it now. And I want you please to be reason-
able."

"Go on, dear."

"Thyrsis," she whispered, after a pause, "it's
Harry."

"Harry.?"

"Harry Stuart, you know."

"Oh," said he. He had all but forgotten the young
drawing-teacher, whom he had left doing Socialist car-
toons.

"Well.?" he inquired.

'TTou see, Thyrsis, I always liked him very much.
And he's been coming up here — quite a good deal. I
didn't see why he shouldn't come — ^Deha liked him too,
and she was with us most of the time. Was it wrong
of me to let him come?"

"I don't know," said he. "TeU me."

"Perhaps it's siUy of me," Corydon continued, hesi-
tatingly-—"but I'm always imagining things about
people. And he seemed to me to have such possibilities.
He has — how shall I say it "

"I recall your saying he had soulful eyes," put in
Thyrsis.

"You'll make fun of it all, of course," said Cory-
don. "But it's really very tragic. You see, he's never
met a woman like me before."

"I can believe that, my dear."

"I mean — a woman that has any real ideas. He
would ask me questions by the hour ; and we talked about
everjrthing. So, of course, we talked about love; and
he — he asked if I was happy."

692 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"I see," said Thyrsis, grimly. "Of course you said
that you were miserable."

"I didn't say much. I told him that your work was
hard, and that my courage wasn't always equal to my
task. Anyone can see that I have suffered."

"Yes, dear," said Thyrsis, "of course. Go on."

"Well, one day — it was last Friday — ^he came up with
a carriage to take us driving. And Delia had a head-
ache, and wanted to rest, and so Harry and I went
alone. I — I guess I shouldn't have gone, but I didn't
realize it. It was a beautiful afternoon, and we both
had a good time — in fact, I don't know when I have
been so contentedly happy. We stopped to gather wild
flowers, and once we sat by a little stream; and of
course, we talked and talked, and before I realized it,
twilight was falling, and we were a long way from
home."

"Gro on," said Thyrsis, as she hesitated.

"We started out. I recollected later, though I didn't
seem to notice it at the time — that Harry's voice seemed
to grow husky, and he spoke indistinctly. He had let
the horse have the reins, and his arm was on the back
of my seat. I hadn't noticed it ; but then — then — fancy
my horror "

"Well.?"

"It happened — all of a sudden." Cory.don stam-
mered, her cheeks turning scarlet. "I felt his arm
clasp me; and I turned and stared, and his face was
close to mine, and his eyes were fairly shining."

There was a pause. "What did you do?" asked
the other.

"I just looked at him calmly, and said, 'Oh, how
could you?' And at that he took his arm away quickly,
and sat up stiff and straight, with a terribly hurt ex-

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 593

pression. 'Forgive me,' he said. 'I was mad.' And
ve neither of us spoke a word all the way home. And
when we came to the house, I jumped out of the car-
riage without saying good-night."

Corydon sat staring at her husband, with her wide-
open, anxious eyes. "And was that all?" he asked.

"To-day I had a letter from him. He said he was
going away, over the Christmas holidays. He said
that he was very much ashamed of himself, and he
hoped that I would be able to forgive him. And that's
aU."

They sat for a while in silence. "You won't be too
angry?" asked Corydon, anxiously.

"I'm not angry at all," he said. "But naturally it's
disturbing. I don't like to have such things happen
to you."

"It's strange, you know," said Corydon, "but I
haven't seemed to stay very indignant. He was so hurt,
you know — and I can realize how unhappy he's been.
Curiously enough, I've even found myself thinking that
I'd like to see him again. And that puzzled me. I felt
that I ought to be quite outraged. That he should
imagine he could hug me — like any shop-girl!"

They spent many hours discussing this adventure ; in
fact it was a week or two before they had disposed of
it entirely. Thyrsis was hoping that the experience
might be utilized to persuade Corydon to modify her
Utopian attitude towards young men with soulful eyes
and waving brown hair. He was at some pains to
set forth to her the psychology of the male creature —
insisting that he knew more about this than she did, and
that his remarks applied to drawing-teachers as well
as to all other arts and professions.

The main question, of course, was as to their atti-

694 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

tude towards Harry Stuart when he returned. Cory-
don, it became clear, had forgiven him ; the phraseology
of his letter was touching, and he was now invested in
the glamor of penitence. She insisted that the episode
might be overlooked, and that their friendship could go
on as before. But Thyrsis argued vigorously that their
relationship could never be the same again, and declared
that they ought not to meet.

"But then," Corydon protested, "he'll be at the Jen-
nings ! And I can't snub him !"

"What does Delia think about it?" he asked.

"Dear me!" Corydon exclaimed. "I haven't told
Delia a word of it!"

"Haven't told her ! But why not.?"

"Because she'd be horrified. She'd never speak to
Harry Stuart again!"

"But then you want me to speak to him! And even
to be cordial to him ! You want to go ahead and carry
on a sentimental flirtation with him •"

"Oh, Thyrsis !" she protested.

"But that's what it would come to. And how much
peace of mind do you suppose I'd have, while I knew
that was going on.""'

At which Corydon sighed pathetically. "I'm a fine
sort of emancipated woman!" she said. "Don't you
see you're playing the role of the conventional jealous
husband?"

But as she thought over the matter in the privacy
of her own mind she was filled with perplexity, and
wondered at herself. She found herself actually long-
ing to see Harry Stuart. She asked herself, "Can it
really be I, Corydon, who am capable of being interested
in any other man besides my husband?" She could not
bring herself to face the fact that it was true.

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 595

§ 4. Thyksis went away, and took to wandering
about the country, wrestling with his new book. After
the fashion of every work that came to possess him, it
seemed to possess him as no other work had ever done
before. His mind was in a turmoil with it, his thoughts
racing from one part to another ; he would stop in the
midst of pumping a bucket of water or bringing in a
supply of wood, to jot down some notes that came to
him. Each day he realized more fully the nature of the
task. Seated alone at night in his tiny cabin, his spirit
would cry out in terror at the burden that had been
heaped upon it.

He had decided upon the title of the book — "Art
and Money: an Essay in the Economic Interpretation
of Literature". And then, late one night, as he was
pondering it, there had flashed over him the form into
which he should cast the work; he would make it, not
only an exposition of his philosophy, but the story of
his life, the cry of his soul. There had come to him
an introductory statement ; it was a smashing thing —
a thing that would arrest and stun! Disraeli had said
that a critic was a man who had failed as a creative
writer ; and Thyrsis would take that taunt and make it
into his battle-cry. "I who write this," he would say —
"I am a failure ; I am a murdered artist ! I sit by the
corpse of my dead dreams, I dip my pen into the heart's
blood of my strangled vision !" So he would indict the
forces that had murdered him, and through the rest of
the book he would pursue them — ^he would track them
to their lair and corner them, and slay them with a
sharp sword.

Meantime Delia Gordon had gone back to her studies,
and Corydon had settled down to her lonely task. She
washed and dressed and fed the baby, and satisfied

596 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

what she could of his insatiable demands for play.
Thyrsis would come and help to get the meals and
wash the dishes ; but even then he was poor company —
he was either tired out, or lost in thought, and his
nerves were in such a state that he could not bear to
be criticized. ' It was getting to be harder for him to
endure the strain of hearing complaints ; and so Cory-
don shrunk more and more into herself, and took to
pouring out her soul in long letters and journals.

"Is it possible," she wrote to Delia, "that to some
people life is a continuous expiation — an expiation of
submerged hereditary sins, as well as of conscious ones ?
A great deal of the time life seems to me a hopeless
puzzle; I am so utterly unfitted for the roles I labor
to play. Is it that I am too low for my environment?
Or can it be that I am too high.'' Surely there must
some day be other things that women can do in the
world besides training children. I trytto love my task,
but I have no talent for it, and it is a frightful strain
upon me. After one hour of blocks and choo-choo cars,
I am perfectly prostrated. I have been cheated out of
the joys of motherhood, that is the truth — the spring
was poisoned for me at the very beginning.

"You must not mind my lamentations, dear Delia,"
she wrote in another letter. "You can't imagine how
lonely my life is — no, for it is different when you are
here. Oh, I am so weary! so weary! It didn't use to
be like this. Every moment of leisure I had I would
run and try to study ; I would read something — I was
always eager and hungry. But now I am dull — -I do
not follow my inspirations. If only Thyrsis and I might
sometimes read together! I love to be read to, but he
cannot bear it — ^he reads three times as fast to himself,
he says. He will do it if I am sick; but even then it

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 597

makes him nervous, and I cannot help but know that,
however he tries to hide it. It is one of our troubles,
but we know each other's states of mind intuitively.

"Oh, Delia, was there ever a tragedy in the world
like that of our love? (Almost everything in our lives
is pain, and so we are coming to stand for pain to each
other !) I ask myself sometimes if any two people who
love could stand what we have to stand. Sometimes I
think they could, if their love was different ; but then
that thought breaks my heart ! Why cannot our love be
different, I ask!

"I had one of my frightful fits of unhappiness to-day.
It was nothing — it was my fault, I guess. I am very
sensitive. But I think it is a tendency of Thyrsis'
temperament to try instinctively to overcome mine. Ap-
parently the only thing that will conquer him is seeing
me suffer ; then he wiU give way — he will promise any-
thing I want, blame himself for his rigidity, scourge
himself for his blindness, do anything at all I ask. So
I teU myself, everything will be different now ; the last
problem is solved ! I see how good and kind he is, how
rfoble his impulses are; he has never failed me in the
big things of life.

"I suppose Mr. Harding writes you about us. He
was up here this afternoon. He was very gentle and
kind to me ; he talked about his religion. Did you tell
him much about me? It is a singular thing, how he
seems to understand without being told. I realized
to-day that whenever we talk about my life, we take
everything for granted. Also, it seems strange that he
does not blame me ; generally people 'who are conven-
tional think that I am selfish, that I ought to be loving
my baby, instead of struggling with my pitiful soul.

"I wrote a little stanza the other night, dear Delia.

698 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Doesn't it seem strange, that when I am at the last
gasp with agony, I should find myself thinking of lines
of poetry? I called it 'Life' ; you will say that it is too
sombre —

" 'A lonely journey in a night of storm,
Lighted by flashes of inconstant faith.
Goaded by multitudes of vague desires.
And mocked by phantoms of remote delight!'"

§ 5. Just at this time Corydon found herself the
victim of backaches and fits of exhaustion, for which
there was no cause to be discovered. Each attack meant
that Thyrsis would have to drop his work, and come
and be housekeeper and nurse ; he would have to repress
every slightest sign of the impatience, which, was burn-
ing him up — knowing that if he gave vent to it, he
would drive Corydon half -wild with suiFering. After
two or three such crises, he made up his mind that it
was impossible for him to go on, until there was some
one to help her in these emergencies.

As a result of their farm-hunting expeditions, they
had in mind a place which was a compromise between
their different requirements. It had a good barn and
plenty of fruit, and at the same time a view, and a house
with comfortable rooms, and wall-paper that was not
altogether unendurable. It was offered for four thou-
sand dollars, of which nearly three-quarters might re-
main upon mortgage; so they had agreed that their
future happiness would depend upon the war-book's
bringing them in a thousand dollars. Since this hope
had failed, he had applied to Darrell, and to Paret, but
neither of them had the money to spare. It now fell
out, that just as he was at the point of desperation, he

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 599

received a letter from the clergyman who had married
them, Dr. Hamilton. This worthy man had been read-
ing Thyrsis' manuscripts and following his career ; and
he now wrote to tell how greatly he. had been impressed
by the new novel. Whereupon the author was seized
by a sudden resolve, and packed up a hand-scrtchel and
set out for the city, with all the forces of his being
nerved for an assault upon this ill-fated clergyman.

Dr. Hamilton sat in his little office, looking pale
and worn, his face deeply seamed with lines of care.
As the poet thought of it in later years, he realized
that this man's function in life was to be a clearing-
house for human misery — ^the wrecks of the competitive
system in all classes and grades of society came to him
to pour out their troubles and beg for help. It was
not so very long afterwards that he went to pieces
from overwork and nervous strain ; and Thyrsis won-
dered with a guilty feeling how much his own assault
had contributed to this result. Assuredly it could not
happen often that a clergyman had to listen to a more
harrowing tale than this "murdered artist" had to
tell.

The doctor heard it out, and then began to argue:
like the philanthropist in Boston, he was greatly
troubled by the fear of "weakening the springs of
character". Being an "advanced" clergyman, he was
familiar with the pat phrases of evolutionary science —
his mind was a queer jumble of the philosophy of Her-
bert Spencer and that of Thomas a Kempis. But
Thyrsis just now was in a mood which might have
moved even Spencer himself; he was almost frantic be-
cause of Corydon, whom he hsud left half-ill at home.
He was not pleading for himself, he said — he could
always get along; but oh, the horror of having to kill

600 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

his wife for the sake of his books! To have to sit by
day by day and watch her dying ! He told about that
night when Corydon had tried to kill herself; and now
another winter was upon them, and he knew that unless
something were done, the spring-time would not find
her alive.

The suicide story turned the balance with the clergy-
man ; Herbert Spencer was put back upon the shelf, and
Thomas h, Kempis ruled the day. Dr. Hamilton said
that he would see one of his rich parishioners, and per-
suade him to take a second mortgage on the farm. And
so Thyrsis went back, a messenger of wondrous tidings.

A few days later came the check. The deed had been
got ready ; and Thyrsis drove to the farm, and carried
off the farmer and his wife to the nearest notary-public.
The old man pleaded to stay in his home until the new
year, but Thyrsis was obdurate, allowing him only a
week in which to get himself and his belongings to an-
other place. And meantime he and Corydon were pack-
ing up. They drove to another "vandew", and pur-
chased more odds and ends of household stuff; and
Thyrsis had his little study loaded upon a wagon, and
taken to the new place.

A wonderful adventure was this moving! To enter
a real house, with two stories, and two pairs of stairs,
and eight rooms, and a cellar, and regular plastered
walls, and no end of closets and shelves and such-like
domestic luxuries ! To be able to set apart a whole
room in which the baby might spread himself with his
toys and marbles and dolls and picture-books — and
without any one's having to stumble over them, and
break their owner's heart! To have a real parlor, with
a stove to sit by, and a table for a lamp, and shelves for
books ; and yet another room to eat in, and another to

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 601

cook in ! To be able to have a woman come to wash the
dishes without making a bosom friend of her, and hav-
ing her hear all the conversation ! To be able to walk
through fields and orchards and woodland, and know
that they belonged to one's self, and would some day
shed their coat of snow and blossom into new life !
Thyrsis wished that he could have the book out of his
mind for a month, so that he might be properly thrilled
by this experience.

It was at the Christmas season, and therefore an ap-
propriate times for celebrating. He went down into
the "wood-lot" — their own "wood-lot" — and cut a
spruce tree, and set it up in the dining-room ; they hung
thereon all the contrivances which the associated grand-
parents had sent down to commemorate an occasion
which was not only Christmas and house-warming, but
the baby's third birthday as well. Because of the triple
conjunction, they invested in a fat goose, to be roasted
in the new kitchen-range; and besides this there were
some spare-ribs and home-made sausages with which a_
neighbor had tempted them. It was a regular story-
book Christmas, with a snow-storm raging outside, and
the wind howling down the chimney, and an odor of
molasses-taffy pervading the house.

§ 6. Aftee which festivities Thyrsis bid farewell
to his family once more, and went away to wrestle with
his angel. Weeks of failure and struggle it cost him
before he could get back what he had lost — ^before he
could recall those phrases that had once blazed white-
hot in his brain, and could see again the whole gigantic
form and figure of his undertaking. Many an hour
he spent pacing his little eight-foot piazza — four steps
and a half each way, back and forth ; many a night he

602 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE,

would sit before his little fourteen-inch stove, so lost
in his meditations that the stove would lose its red-hot
glow, and the icy gale which raged outside and rattled
the door would steal in through the cracks and set
him to shivering.

Other times he would trudge through the snow and
mud to the town, spending the day in the library, and
then bringing out an armful of books to last him
through the night. Thyrsis had read pretty thoroughly
the literature of the six languages he knew ; but now —
this was the appalling nature of his task — ^he had to
go back and read it over again. He did not realize,
until he got actually at the work, what an utter over-
turning there would be in all his ideas. How strange
it was to return and read the "classics" of one's youth !
What oceans of futility one discovered, what mountains
of pretense — and with what forests of scholarship
grown over them! It seemed to Thyrsis that every-
where he turned the search-light of his new truth, the
structure of his opinions would topple like a house of
cards. Truly, here was a "Gotzendammerung", an
"Umwertung aller Werthe"!

The worst of it was that he had to read, not only
literature, but also history — often his own kind of his-
tory, that had not yet been written. If he wished to
know the Shakespearean dramas as a product of the
aristocratic and imperialist ideal in the glory and in-
toxication of its youth, he had to study, not only
Shakespeare's poetry, but the cultural and social life
of the Elizabethan people. And he could not take any
man's word for the truth ; he had to know for himself.
The thing that would avail him in this battle was not
eloquence and fervor, not the flashes of his irony and

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 603

the white-hot shafts of his scorn. What he must have
were facts, and more facts — and then again facts !

The facts were there, to be had for the gathering.
Thyrsis again could only compare himself to Aladdin
in his palace. Could it be believed that so many ideas
had be^en left for one man to discover? It seemed to
him, that the kingdoms of literature lay at his mercy;
he was- like a magician who has discovered a new spell,
which places his rivals in his power. He knew that this
book, if he could ever finish it, would alter the aspect
of literary criticism, as a blow changes the pattern in
a kaleidoscope.

Thyrsis had failed many times before, but this time
hetfelt that success was in his hands ; he knew the book-
world now, he was master of the game. This would set
them to thinking, this would stir them up! He had
got under the armor of his enemy at last, and he could
feel him wince and writhe at each thrust that he drove
home. So he wrought at his task, in a state of tense
excitement, living always in imagination in the midst
of the battle, following stroke with stroke and driving
a rout before him. — So he would be for weeks ; and then
would come the reaction, when he fell back exhausted,
and realized that his victory was mere phantasy, that
nothing of it really counted until he had completed his
labor. And that would take two years! Two years!

§ 7. From visions such as this Thyrsis came back
to wrestle with all the problems of a household; with
pumps that froze and drains that clogged, with stoves
that went out and ashes that spilled, with milk-boys
that were late and kitchen-maids that were snow-bound.
He would leave his work at one or two o'clock in the
morning, and make his way through the snow and the

604 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

storm to the house, and crawl into bed, and then take
his chances of being awakened by the baby, or' by some
spell of agony with Corydon.

He might not sleep alone ; that supreme- symbol of
domesticity Corydon could not give up, and he soon
ceased to ask for it. It seemed such a little thing to
yield; and yet it meant so much to him! The room
where he slept came to seem to him a chamber of terror,
a place lo which he went "like the galley-slave at night,
scourged to his dungeon". It was a place where* a crime
was enacted ; where the vital forces of his being were
squandered, and the body and soul of him were wrung
and squeezed dry like a sponge. This was marriage —
it was the essence of marriage; it was the slavery into
which he had delivered himself, the duty to which he
was bound. And in how many millions of homes was
this same thing going on — this licensed preying of one
personality upon another? And the nightmare thing
was upheld and buttressed by all the forces of society —
priests were saying blessings over it and moralists
were singing the praises of it — "the holy bonds of
matrimony", it was called !

It was all the worse to Thyrsis because there was that
in him which welcomed this animal intimacy. So he
saw that day by day their lives were slipping to a lower
plane; day by day they were discovering new weak-
nesses and developing new vices in themselves. Cory-
don was now a good part of the time in pain of some
sort ; and the doctors had accustomed her to stave off
these crises with various kinds of drugs, so that she had
a set of shelves crowded with pills and powders and
bottles. She had learned to rely upon them in emer-
gencies, to plead for them when she was helpless ; and
so Thyrsis saw her declining into an inferno. He would

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 605

argue with her and plead with her and fight with her;
he would spend days trying to open her eyes to the
peril, to show her that it was better to suffer pain than
to resort to these treacherous aids.

§ 8. They still had their hours of enthusiasm, of
course, their illuminations and their resolutions. Dur-
ing the summer, while browsing among the English mag-
azines in the library, Thyrsis had stumbled upon an
astonishing article dealing with the subject of health.
He read it in a state of great excitement, and then took
it home and read it to Corydon. It told of the achieve-
ments of a gentleman by the name- of Horace Fletcher,
who had« once possessed robust health, and lost it
through careless living, and had then restored it by
a new system of eating. To Thyrsis this came as one
of the great discoveries of his life. For years every
instinct of his nature had been whispering to him that
his ways of eating were vicious ; but he had been ig-
norant and helpless — and with all the world that he knew
in opposition to him. As he read the article, he re-
called a talk he had had with his "family doctor", way
back before his marriage, when he had first begun to
notice symptoms of stomach-trouble. He had sug-
gested' timidly that there might be something wrong with
his diet, and that if the doctor would tell him exactly
what he ought to eat, and how much and how often, he
would be glad to adopt the regimen. But the doctor
had only laughed and answered, "Nonsense, boy— don't
you get to thinking about your food !" And so Thyrsis
had gone away, to follow the old plan of eating what
he liked. Health, it would seem, must be a spontaneous
and accidental thing, it could not be a deliberate and
reasoned thing.

606 LO^XS PILGBIMAGK

But now he aod Corrdon became saiitten with a pas-
sion of shame few aD thm' stupiditv and ti»eir ghit-
tonj; thej invested in Fletcher's boots, and set out
upon thB new adrattore. Thev wouki bslp th€in5t*^'*>
to a Tcry small sauoerfid of food ; and they would take
of this a Tery smaQ spoonful — atxti d>ew — and chew —
s."d chev. Mr. Ffetcho- s;iid that half an hour a day
was enough for the eating of the food one nee^d : but
they, apparently, could hare chewed for boors, and
still been hungry. They labored religiously to stop ss
soon as they could pretend to be satisfied; the result
of which was that Thyrsis lost fourteen pounds in as
many days — and it was many a lona: year before he
got those fourteen pounds back! He became still more
"spiritual" in his aspect; unto finally he and Corydon
set out for a walk cme day. and coming up a hiU to their
home they g^re out aItogi;ther. and first Thyrsis had to
crawl up the hill and gtt soiuetoiiig to eat. and then
take swnething down to Corydon !

However, in spite of all -their blunifers, this new ides
was of giaiuine ben^t to them ; at least it put them upon
the right tract — it taught thenn the relationship be-
tween diet and disease. They saw the two as cause and
consequoace — they watched the food they ate affecting
their bodies as onie might watch a matcji affecting a
thermometer. They were no longer victims of the idea
that health must be a spontaneous and acc^oital thinsj
— ^they were set d^nitely to thinking about it, as soiuo-
thing that could be achieved by will and intelligeiice.

But the right knowledge lay far in the future; and
meantime they were groping in ignorance, and disease
was stQl a mysterious visitation that came upon them
out of the night. "Thus saith the Lord, About mid-
night will I go out into the midst of Egypt: and all

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 607

the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. And there
shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt,
such as there hath been none like it, nor shall be like
it any more."

Their own firstborn had low been on the rtgvme of
the "child specialist" for a year and a half. He was
big and fat and rosy, and according to all the standards
they knew, a picture of health. He was the pride of
his parents' hearts — the one success they had achieved,
and to which they could turn their eyes. He was a
frightful burden to them — the most noisy and irre-
pressible of children. But they struggled and worried
along with him, and were proud of him — and even, in
a stormy sort of way, were happy with him. But now
a calamity fell upon him, bringing them the most ter-
rible distress they had yet had to face in their lives.

§ 9. It was all the worse because they laid the blame
upon themselves. They were accustomed to attribute
sickness to this or that trivial cause — if Corydon caught
a cold, it was because she had sat in a draught, and if
Thyrsis was laid up with tonsilitis, it was because he
had gone out for kindling-wood without his hat. It
had been their wont to bundle the child up and turn
him out to play; and one very cold day he had stood
a long time under the woodshed, and had got chilled.
So that night his head was hot, and he was fretful ; and
in the morning he would not eat, and apparently had
a fever. They sent off in haste for the doctor ; and the
doctor came and examined him, and shook his head and
looked very grave. It was pneumonia, he said, and a
serious case.

So Corydon and Thyrsis had to put all things else
aside, and gird themselves for a siege. There were

608 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

medicines to be administered every hour, and minute
precautions to be taken to keep the patient from the
slightest chill; he must be in a warm room, and yet
with some ventilation. All these things they attended
to, and then they would sit and gaze at the sufferer,
dumb with grief and fear. Through the night Thyrsis
sat by the bedside, while Cedric babbled and raved in
delirium ; and no suffering that he had ever experienced
was equal to this.

How he loved this baby, how passionately, how
cruelly ! How he clung to him, blindly and desperately
— the thought of losing him simply tore his heart to
pieces! He would hold the hot hands, he would touch
the little body; how he loved that body, that was so
beautiful and soft and white! How many times he
had bathed it and dressed it and hugged it to him ! He
would sit and listen to the fevered prattle, full of
childish phrases which brought before him the childish
soul — the wonderful, lovable thing, so merry and eager,
60 full of mischief and curiosity ; with strange impulses
of tenderness, and flashes of intelligence that thrilled
one, and opened long vistas to the imagination. He was
all they had, this baby — he was all they had saved out
of the ruin of their lives, out of the shipwreck of their
love. What sacrifices they had made for him — what
agonies he represented! And now, the idea that they
might never see him, nor touch him, nor hear his voice
again I

Also would come agonies of remorse. Thyrsis would
face the blunder they had made — it might have been
avoided so easily, and now it was irrevocable! His
whole body would shake with silent sobbing. Ah, this
curse of their lives, this hideous shame — that they had
not even been able to take proper care of their child!

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 609

This wrong, too, the world meant to inflict upon them
— this supreme vengeance, this cruel punishment!

§ 10. The doctor came next morning, and found
the patient worse. This was the crisis, he said; if the
little one lived through the night — And there he
paused, seeing the agony in the eyes of the mother and
father. They would do all they could, he said; they
must hope for the best.

So the siege went on. Thyrsis sat through the night
again — and Corydon, who could not rest either, would
come into the room every little while, and listen and
watch. They would hold each other's hand for hours,
dumb with suffering ; ghostly presences seemed to haunt
the sick-chamber and set them to trembling. Thyrsis
found himself thinking of that most terrible of all bal-
lads, "The Erl-King". How he had shuddered once,
hearing it sung! —

'*Dem Vater grauset's, er reitet geschwind!"

All through the night he seemed to hear the hammer-
strokes of the horse's hoofs echoing through his soul.

The child lived through the night, but the crisis was
not yet over. The fever held on; the issue of life and
death seemed to hang upon the flutter of an eyelid.
There was one more night to be sat throughs and
Thyrsis, whose restless intellect must needs be dealing
with all issues, had by then fought his way through
this terror also. They must get control of themselves
at all hazards, he said; they must face the facts. If
so the child should die —

He tried to say something of the sort to Corydon,
seeking to steady her. But Corydon became almost

610 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

frantic at his words. "You must not say such a thing,
you must not think such a thing !" she cried.

Corydon had been reading about "new thought", and
she insisted that would be "holding the idea" of death
over the child. "The thing for us to do," she said, "is
to iqgke up our minds — he must live, we must know
that he will live !" — It was no time to argue about
metaphysics, but Thyrsis found this proposition a
source of great perplexity. How could a man make
himself know what he did not know?

The crisis passed, and the child lived. But the ill-
ness continued for a couple of weeks — and how pitiful
it was to see their baby, that had been so big and rosy,
and was now pale and thin and weak! And when at
last he got up and went outdoors again, he caught a
cold, and there was a relapse, and another siege of the
dread disease; the doctor had not warned them suflB-
ciently, it seemed. So there was a week or two more
of watching and worrying; and then they had to face
the fact that little Cedric would be delicate for a long
while — would need to be guarded with care all through
the spring.

Thyrsis blamed himself for all that had happened;
the weight of it rested upon him forever afterwards, as
if it were some crime he had committed. Sometimes
when he was overwrought and overdriven, he would lie
awake in the small hours of the morning, and this
spectre would come and sit by him. He had made a
martyr of the child he loved, he had sacrificed it to
what he called his art; and how had he dared to do it.?

It was hard to think of a more cruel question to put
to a man. Himself, no doubt, he might scourge and
drive and wreck ; but this child — what were the child's
rights.'' Thyrsis would try to weigh them against the

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS 611

claims of posterity. What his own work might be, he
knew; and to what extent should he sacrifice it to the
unknown possibilities of his son? Some sacrifice there
had to be — such was the stern decree of the "economic
screw."

So Thyrsis once more was a field of warring motives ;
once more he faced the curse of his life — that he could
not be as other men, he could not have other men's
virtues. It was the latest aspect, and the most tragic,
of that impulse in him which had made- him fight so
hard against marriage; which had made him quote to
Corydon the lines of the outlaw's song —

"The fiend whose lantern lights the mead
Were better mate than I!"

Book XVI
THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM

The scarlet ^ush of mornmg was in the sky; and
they stood upon the hill again, and watched the color
spreading.

"We must go," she was saying. "But it was worth-
while to come."

"It was all worth-while," he said — "all!"

And she smiled, and quoted some lines from the
poem —

"Thou too, 0 Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound;
Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!

Men gave thee nothing; hut this happy quest.
If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power,

If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest!"

§ 1. This illness of the baby's had been a fearful
drain upon their strength; and Thyrsis perceived that
they had now got to a point where they could no longer
stand alone. There must be a servant in the house, to
help Corydon, and do for the baby what had to be done.
It was a hard decision for him to face, for his money
was almost gone, and the book loomed larger than ever.
But there was no escaping the necessity.

They would get a married couple, they decided —
the man could pay for himself by working the farm.
So they put an advertisement in a city paper, and pe-
rused the scores of mis-spelled replies. After due cor-
respondence, and much consultation, they decided upon
Patrick and Mary Flanagan ; and Thyrsis hired a two-
seated carriage and drove in to meet them at the depot.

It was all very funny; years afterwards, when the
clouds of tragedy were dispersed, they were able to
laugh over the situation. Thyrsis had been used to
servants in boyhood, but that was before he had ac-
quired any ideas as to universal brotherhood and the
rights of man. Now he hated all the symbols and symp-
toms of mastership ; he shrunk from any sort of clash
with unlovely personalities — ^he would be courteous and
deprecating to the very tramp who came to his door
to beg. And here were Patrick and Mary, very Irish,
enormously stout, and devotedly Roman Catholic, hav-
ing spent all their lives as caretakers of "gentlemen's
country-places". They had most precise ideas as to
what gentlemen's country-places should be, and how

615

610 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

they should be equipped, and how the gentlemen of the
country-places should treat their servants. And need-
less to say, they found nothing in this new situation
which met with their approval. There were si_gns of
humiliating poverty everywhere, and the farm-outfit
was inadequate. As to the master and mistress, they
must have been puzzling phenomena for Patrick and
Mary to make up their minds about — possessing so
many of the attributes of the lady and gentleman, and
yet being lacking in so many others !

Patrick was a precise and particular person ; he
wanted his work laid out just so, and then he would do
it without interference. As for Mary — he stood in awe
of Mary himself, and so he accepted the idea that Cory-
don and Thyrsis should stand in awe of her too. Mary
it was who announced that their dietary was inadequate ;
she took no stock at aU in Fletcher and Chittenden —
she knew that working-people must have meat at least
four times a week. Also Mary maintained that their
room was not large enough for so stout a couple. Also
she arranged it that Corydon and Thyrsis should get
the dinner on Sundays — the Roman Catholic church
being five miles away, and the hour of mass being late,
and the horse very old and slow.

For two months Corydon and Thyrsis struggled
along under the dark and terrible shadow of the disap-
proval of the Flanagan family. Then one day there
came a violent crisis between Corydon and Mary — oc-
casioned by a discussion of the effect of an excess of
grease upon the digestibility of potato-starch. Cory-
don fled in tears to her husband, who started for the
kitchen forthwith, meaning to dispose of the Flana-
gans ; when, to his vast astonishment, Corydon experi-
enced one of her surges of energy, and thrust him to

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 617

one side, and striding out upon the field of combat,
proceeded to deliver herself of her pent-up sentiments.
It was a discourse in the grandest style of tragedy,
and Mary Flanagan was quite dumbfounded — appar-
ently this was a "lady" after all! So the Flanagan
family packed its belongings and departed in a chas-
tened frame of mind ; and Corydon turned to her spouse,
her eyes still flashing, and remarked, "If only I had
talked to her that way from the beginning!"

§ 2. Thek once more there was answering of ad-
vertisements, and another couple was spewed forth from
the maw of the metropolis — "Henery and Bessie
Dobbs", as they subscribed themselves. "Henery"
proved to be the adult stage of the East Side "gamin" ;
lean and cynical, full of slang and humor and the odor
of cigarettes. He was fresh from a "ticket-chopper's"
job in the subway, and he knew no more about farming
than Thyrsis did ; but he put up a clever "bluff", and
was so prompt with his wits that it was hard to find
fault with him successfully. As for his wife, she had
come out of a paper-box factory, and was as skilled at
housekeeping as her husband was at agriculture; she
was frail and consumptive, and told Corydon the story
of her pitiful life, with the result that she was able to
impose upon her even more than her predecessor had
done.

"Henery" was slow at pitching hay and loading
stone, but when the season came, he developed a genius-
for peddling fruit ; he was always hungry for any sort
of chance to bargain, and was forever coming upon
things which Thyrsis ought to buy. Very quickly the
neighborhood discovered this propensity of his, and
there was a constant stream of farmers who came to

618 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

offer second-hand buggies, and wind-broken horses, and
dried-up cows, and patent hay-rakes and churns and
corn-shellers at reduced values ; all of which rather
tended to reveal to Thyrsis the unlovely aspects of his
neighbors, and to weaken his faith in the perfectibility
of the race.

Among Henery's discoveries was a pair of aged and
emaciated mules. He became eloquent as to how he
could fatten up these mules and what crops he
could raise in the spring. So Thyrsis bought the
mules, and also a supply of feed; but the fattening
process failed to take effect — for the reason, as Thyr-
sis finally discovered, that the mules were in need of
new teeth. When the plowing season began, Henery at
first expended a vast amount of energy in beating the
creatures with a stick, but finally he put his inventive
genius to work, and devised a way to drive them without
beating. It was some time before Thyrsis noted the
change ; when he made inquiries, he learned to his con-
sternation that the ingenious Henery had fixed up the
stick with a pin in the end !

At any time of the day one might stand upon the
piazza of the house and gaze out across the corn-field,
and see a long procession marching through the furrow.
First there came the mules, and then came the plow, and
then came Henery ; and after Henery followed the dog,
and after the dog followed the baby, and after the
baby followed a train of chickens, foraging for worms.
Little Cedric was apparently content to trot back
and forth in the field for hours; which to his much-
occupied parents seemed a delightful solution of a prob-
lem. But it happened one day when they had a visit
from Mr. Harding, that Thyrsis and the clergy-
man came round the side of the house, and discovered

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 619

the child engaged in trying to drag a heavy arm-chair
through a door that was too small for it. He was
wrestling like a young titan, purple in the face with
rage; and shouting, in a perfect reproduction of
Henery's voice and accent, "Come round here, God
damn you, come round here !"

There were many such drawbacks to be balanced
against the joys of "life on a farm". Thyrsis re-
flected with a bitter smile that his experiences and
Corydon's had been calculated to destroy their illusions
as to several kinds of romance. They had tried "Grub
Street", and the poet's garret, and the cultivating of
literature upon a little oatmeal; they had not found
that a joyful adventure. They had tried the gypsy
style of existence ; they had gone back "to the bosom
of nature" — and had found it a cold and stony bosom.
They had tried out "love in a cottage", and the story-
writer's dream of domestic raptures. And now they
were chasing another will o' the wisp — that of "amateur
farming" ! When Thyrsis had purchased half the old
junk in the township, and had seen the mules go lame,
and the cows break into the pear-orchard and "founder"
themselves ; when he had expended two hundred dollars'
worth of money and two thousand dollars' worth of
energy to raise one hundred dollars' worth of vege-
tables and fruit, he framed for himself the conclusion
that a farm is an excellent place for a literary man,
provided that he can be kept from farming it.

§ S. As the result of such extravagances, when
they had got as far as the month of February, Thyrsis'
bank-account had sunk to almost nothing. However,
he had been getting ready for this emergency ; he had
prepared a scenario of his new book, setting forth the

620 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

ideas it would contain and the form which it would take.
This he sent to his publisher, with a letter saying
that he wanted the same contract and the same advance
as before. •

And again he waited in breathless suspense. He knew
that he had here a work of vital import, one that would
be certain to make a sensation, even if it did not sell
like a novel. It was, to be sure, a radical book — per-
haps the most radical ever published in America; but
on the other hand, it dealt with questions of literaturfe
and philosophy, where occasionally even respectable and
conservative reviews permitted themselves to daily with
ideas. Thyrsis was hoping that the publisher might
see prestige and publicity in the adventure, and decide
to take a chance ; when this proved to be the case, he
sank back with a vast sigh of relief. He had now money
enough to last until midsummer, and by that time the
book would be mor? than half done — and also the farm
would be paying.

But alas, it seemed with them that strokes of calamity
always followed upon strokes of good fortune. At this
time Corydon's ailments became acute, and her nervous
crises were no longer to be borne. There were anxious
consultations on the subject, and finally it was decided
that she should consult another "specialist". This was
an uncle of Mr. Harding's, a man of most unusual
character, the clergyman declared ; the latter was going
to the city, and would be glad to introduce Cory don.

So, a couple of days later came to Thyrsis a letter,
conveying the tidings that she was discovered to be
suffering from an abdominal tumor, and should un-
dergo an immediate operation. It would cost a hun-
dred dollars, and the hospital expenses would be at
least as much; which meant that, with the bill-paying

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 621

that had already taken place, their money would all be
gone at the outset!

But Thyrsis did not waste any time in lamenting the
inevitable. He was rather glad of the tidings, on the
whole — at least there was a definite cause for Corydon's
suffering, and a prospect of an end to it. Both of
them had still their touching faith in doctors and sur-
geons, as speaking with final and godlike authority
upon matters beyond the comprehension of the ordinary
mind. The operation would not be dangerous, Cory-
don wrote, and it would make a new woman of her.

"If I could only have Delia Gordon with me," she
added, "then my happiness would be complete. Only
think of it, she left for Africa last week ! I know she
would have waited, if she'd known about this.

"However, I shall make out. Mr. Harding is going
to be in town for more than a week — ^he is attending
a conference of some sort, and he has promised to
come and see me in the hospital. I think he likes to do
such things — he has the queerest professional air about
it, so that you feel you are being sympathized with
for the glory of God. But really he is very beautiful
and good, and I think you have never appreciated him.
I am happy to-day, almost exhilarated', I feel as if
I were about to escape from a dungeon."

§ 4. Such was the mood in which she went to her
strange experience. She liked the hospital-room, tiny,
but immaculately clean ; she liked the nurses, who seemed
to her to be altogether superior and exemplary beings
— moving with such silence and assurance about their
various tasks. She slept soundly, and in the morning
they combed and plaited her hair and prepared her for
the ceremony. There came a bunch of roses to her

622 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

room, with a card from Mr. Harding; and these were
exquisite, and made her happy, so that, when the doctor
arrived, she went almost gaily to the operating-room.

Everything there aroused her curiosity; the pure
white walls and ceiling, shining with matchless clean-
ness, the glittering instruments arranged carefully on
glass tables, the attentive and pleasant-faced nurses,
standing also in pure white, and the doctor in his vest-
ments, smiling reassuringly. In the centre of the room
was a large glass table, long enough for a reclining
body, and through the sky-light the sun poured a pleas-
ing radiance over all. "How beautiful!" exclaimed
Corydon ; and the nurses exchanged glances, and the
old doctor failed to hide an expression of surprise.

"I wish all my patients felt like that," said he.
"Now climb up on the table."

Corydon promptly did so, and another doctor who
was to administer the anaesthetic came to her side.
"Take a very deep breath, please," he said, as he placed
over her mouth a white, cone-shaped thing that had a
rather suffocating odor. Corydon was obedience itself,
and breathed.

In a moment her body seemed to be falling from her.
"Oh, I don't like it !" she gasped.

"Breathe deeply, and count as far as you can," came
a voice from far above her.

"Stop!" whispered Corydon. "Oh, I don't want —
I want to come back !"

Then she began to count — or rather some strange
voice, not hers, seemed to count for her; as the first
numbness passed, farther and farther away she seemed
to dissolve, to become a disembodied consciousness poised
in a misty ether. And at that moment — so she told
Thyrsis afterwards^the face of Mr. Harding seemed

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 623

to appear just above her, and to look at her with a
pained and startled expression. It was a beautiful face,
she thought; and she knew that everything she felt
was being immediately registered in Mr. Harding's
mind. They were two aiBnitized beings, suspended in
the centre of a cosmos ; their soul intelligences were aU
that had been left of the sentient world after some
cataclysm.

"I always knew that about us," thought Corydon,
and she realized that the face before her understood,
even though at the moment it, too, was dissolving. "I
wonder why" — she mused — "why — " And then the
little spark went out.

Two hours later the doctor was bending over her,
anxiously scrutinizing her passive face. "Nurse, bring
me some ice-water," he was saying. "She takes her time
coming to." And sharply he struck her cheek and fore-
head with his finger-tips ; but she showed no sign.

Deep down in some mysterious inner chamber, be-
neath the cahn face, there was being enacted a grim
spirit-drama. Corydon's soul was making a monstrous
effort to return to its habitation ; Corydon felt herself
hanging, a tortured speck of being, in a dark and
illimitable void. "This may be Hell," she thought. "I
have neither hands nor feet, and I cannot fight; but I
can will to get back !" This efiFort cost her inexpressible
agony.

A strange incessant throbbing was going on in the
black pit over which she seemed suspended. It had a
kind of rhythm — metallic, and yet with a human reso-
nance. It began way down somewhere, and proceeded
with maddening accuracy to ascend through the semi-
tones of a gigantic scale. Each beat was agony to
her ; it ascended to a certain pitch in merciless crescendo.

624 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

then fell to the bottom again, and began anew its swift,
maddeningly accurate ascent. Each time it ascended
a little higher, and always straining her endurance to
the uttermost, and bringing a more vivid realization of
agony. "Will you stop here," it seemed to pulsate.
"No, no, I will go on," willed Corydon. "You shall
not keep me, I must escape, I must get out." But it
kept up incessantly, ruthlessly, its strange, formless,
soundless din, until the spirit writhed in its grasp.

Finally it seemed to Corydon that she was getting
nearer — nearer to something, she knew not what. The
blackness about her seemed to condense, and she found
herself in what was apparently the middle of a lake,
and some dark bodies with arms were trying to drag
her down. "No, no," she willed to these forms, "you
shall not. I do not belong here, I belong up — up !"
And by a violent effort she escaped — into sensations yet
more agonizing, more acute. The vibrations were get-
ting faster and faster, whirling her along, stretching
her consciousness to pieces. "Will it never end.''" she
thought. "Have mercy!" But after an eternity of
such repetition, she found a bright Hght staring at her,
and a frightful sense of heaviness, like mountains piled
upon her. Also, eating her up from head to foot, was
a strange, unusual pain ; yes, it must be pain, though
she had never felt anything like it before. She moaned ;
and there came a spasm of nausea, that seemed to tear
her asunder.

The doctor was standing by her. "She gave me quite
a fright," he was saying. "There, that's it, nurse.
She'll be sleeping sweetly in a minute." The nurse
hurried forward, and Corydon felt a stinging sensa-
tion in her side, and then a delightful numbness crept
over her. "Oh, thank you, doctor," she whispered.

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 625

§ 5. TkE next week held for Corydon continuous
suffering, which she bore with a rebellious defiance —
feeling that she had been betrayed in some way. "If
you had only told me," she wailed, to the doctor. "I
would rather have stayed as I was before !" For answer
he would pat her cheek and tell her to go to sleep.

The days dragged on. Every afternoon her mother
came and read to her for several hours; and in the
afternoons Mr. Harding would come, and sit by her
bedside in his kind way and talk to her. Sometimes he
only stayed a few minutes, but often he would spend
an hour or so, trying to dispel the clouds of gloom and
despondency that were hanging over her. Corydon
told him of her vision in the operating-room, and
strange to say he declared that he had known it all;
also he said that he had helped her to fight her way
back to life.

He seemed to understand her every need, and from
his sympathy gave her all the comfort he could. But
he little realized all that it meant to her — ^how deeply
it stirred her gratitude and her liking for him. During
the day she would find herself counting the hours until
the time he had named ; and when the expected knock
would come, and his tall figure ap'pear at the door, her
heart would give a sudden jump and send the blood
rushing to her head. Her lips would tremble slightly
as she held out her hand to him ; and as he sat and
looked at her, she would become uncomfortably con-
scious of the beating of her heart ; in fact at times it
would almost suff^ocate her, and her cheeks would be-
come as fire.

She wondered if he noticed it. But he seemed con-
cerned only for her welfare, and anxiously inquired
how she telt. She was not doing well, it seemed, and

626 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

the doctor was greatly troubled; her temperature had
not become normal since the operation, and they could
not account, for it, as she was suffering no more than
the usual amoimt of pain. To Corydon this was a
matter of no importance; she was willing to lie there
all day, if only the hour of Mr. Harding's visit would
come more quickly. She was beginning to be alarmed
because she had such difficulty in controlling her ex-
citement.

The magic hour would strike, and the door of hope
open, and there upon the threshold he would appear,
in all his superb manhood. Corydon thought she had
never before met a man who gave her such an impression
of vitality. He was splendid ; he was like a young
Viking, who brought into the room with him the pure-
air of the Northern mountains. When he looked at
her, his eyes assumed a wonderful expression, a "golden"
expression, as Corydon described it to herself. And
day after day she clothed this Viking in more lustrous
garments, woven from the threads of her imagination,
her innermost desires and her dreams. And always at
sight of him, her heart beat faster, her head became
hotter; until the bed she lay upon became a bed of
burning coals. She realized at last what had happened
to her, that she loved — yes, that she loved! But she
must not let her Viking see it ; that would be unpardon-
able, it would damn her forever in his sight. And so
she struggled with her secret. At night she slept in
fitful starts, and in the morning she lay pale and
sombre. But when he came she was all brilliancy and
animation.

§ 6. Each night the doctor would look anxiously
at his thermometer; it was a source of great worry

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 627

to him and to Corydon's parents that the fever
did not abate. Also, needless to say, the news worried
Thyrsis ; all the more, because it meant a long stay in
the hospital, and more of their money gone. At last
he came up to town to see about it; and Corydon
thought to herself, "This is very wrong of me. It is
Thyrsis I ought to be interested in, it is his sympathy
I ought to be craving."

She brought the image of Thyrsis before her; it
seemed vague and unreal. She found that she remem-
bered mostly the unattractive aspects of him. And this
brought a pang to her. "He is good and noble," she
told herself; she forced herself to think of generous
things that he had done.

He came; and then she felt still more ashamed. He
had been working very hard, and was pale and haggard ;
it was becoming to him to be that way. Recollections
came back to her in floods ; yes, he was truly good and
noble !

He sat by her bedside, and she told him about the
operation, and poured out the hunger of her soul to
him. He stayed all the morning with her, and he came
again and spent the afternoon with her. He read to
her and kissed her and soothed her — his influence was
very calming, she found. After he had gone for the
night, Corydon lay thinking, "I still love him !"

How strange it was that she could love two men at
once! It was surely very wrong! She would never
have dreamed that she, Corydon, could do such a thing.
She thought of Harry Stuart, and of the unacknowl-
edged thrill of excitement which his presence had
brought to her. "And now here it is again," she
mused — "only this time it is worse! What cam. be the
matter with vae?"

628 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

Then she wondered, "Do I really love Mr. Harding?
Haven't I got over it now?" But the least thinking of
him sufficed to set her heart to thumping again ; and so
she shrunk from that train of thought. She wanted
to love her husband.

He came again the next morning, and Corydon found
that she was very happy in his presence. Her fever
was slightly lower, and she thought, "I will get well
quickly now."

But alas, she had reckoned in this without Thyrsis !
To sit in the hospital all day was a cruel strain upon
him ; the more so as he had been entirely unprepared
for it. Corydon had assured him that the operation
would be nothing, and that she would not need him ;
and so he had just finished a harrowing piece of labor
on the book. Now to stay all day and witness her
struggle, to satisfy her craving for sympathy and to
meet and wrestle with her despair — it was like having
the last drops of his soul-energy squeezed out of him.
He did not know what was troubling Corydon, but the
rapport between them was so close, that he knew she
was in some distress of mind.

He stood the ordeal as long as he could, and then he
had to beg for respite. Cedric was down on the farm,
with no one but the servants to care for him ; so he would
go back, and see that everything was all right, and
after he had rested up for two or three days, he would
come again. Corydon smiled faintly and assented — for
that morning she had received a note from Mr. Harding,
saying that he would be in town the next day, and
would pall.

So Thyrsis went away, and Corydon lay and thought
the problem over again, "Yes, I love my husband ; but
it's such an effort for him to love me ! And why should

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 629

that be? I don't believe it would be such an effort for
Mr. Harding to love me!"

So again she was seized by the thought of the young
clergyman. And she was astonished at the difference
in her feelings — the flood of emotion that swept over
her. Her heart began to beat fast and her cheeks once
more to burn. He was coming up to the city on pur-
pose, this time; it must be that he wanted to see her
very much!

That night was an especially hard one for her; she
felt as though the frail shell that held her were break-
ing, as though her endurance were failing altogether.
The- fever had risen, and her bed had seemed like the
burning arms of Moloch. Once she imagined that the
room was stifling her, and in a sudden frenzy of im-
patience she struggled upon one elbow and flung her
pillow across the room. In that instant she had noticed
a new and sharp pain in her side ; it did not leave her,
though at the time she thought little about it.

She was all absorbed in the coming of Mr. Harding;
by the time morning had come she had made up her
mind that her one hope of deliverance was in confession.
She must tell him, she must make known to him her
love; and he would forgive her, and then her heart
would not beat so violently at sight of him, her fever
would abate and she might rest.

But when he sat there, talking to her, and looking
so beautiful and so strange, she trembled, and made
half a dozen vain efforts to begin. Finally she asked,
"Have you ever read that poem of Heine's —

'Ein Jiingling liebt ein Madchen,
Die hat einen Andern erwahlt?' "

LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"Oh, yes," he answered; then they were silent again.
Finally Corydon nerved herself to yet another effort.
"Mr. Harding," she said, "will you come a little nearer,
please. I have something very important to say to you."
And then, waveringly and brokenly, now in agonized
abashment, now rushing ahead as she felt his encourage-
ment and sympathy, she gave him the whole story of her
suffering and its cause. When she came to the words
"because I love you", she closed her eyes and her spirit
sank back with a great gasp of relief.

When she opened them again, his head was bowed
in his hands and he did not move. "Mr. Harding," she
whispered, "Mr. Harding, you forgive me, do you not.''
You do not hate me?"

He roused himself with an effort. "Dear child," said
he, and as he looked at her she thought she had never
seen a face so sad, so exquisite — "it is I who ask for-
giveness."

He rose and came to her bedside, and took her hand
in both of his. "It would not be right for me to say
to you what you have said to me. We must not speak
of this any more. You wiU promise me this, and then
you will rest, and to-morrow you will be better. Soon
you will be well; and how glad your husband will be
— and all of us."

With that he pressed her hand firmly, and left the
room; and Corydon turned her face to the wall, and
whispered happily to herself, "Yes, he loves me, he loves
me! And now I shall rest!"

§ 7. Fob, a while she slept the sleep of exhaustion,
nor did there fall across her dreams the shadow of the
angel of fate who was even then placing his mark upon
her forehead. Toward morning she was awakened

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 631

suddenly with the sharp pain in her side; but it abated
presently, and Corydon thought blissfully of the after-
noon before. He would come again to her, she would
see him that very day ; and so what did pain matter ?
She was really happy at last. But as the day advanced,
she became uneasy ; her fever had not diminished, and
the pain was becoming more persistent.

The nurse was anxious, too. Her mother came and
regarded her in alarm. But she was thinking of Mr.
Harding. He was coming; he might arrive at any
moment.

There was a knock upon the door. Corydon's pulse
fluttered, and she whispered, "Here he is !" She could
scarcely speak the words, "Come in". But when the
door opened, she saw that it was the doctor. Her heart
sank, and she closed her eyes with a moan of pain.
Could it be that he was not coming.'' Could it be that
she had been mistaken — that he did not love her after
all.'' She must see him — she must! She could not en-
dure this suspense ; she could not endure these inter-
ruptions by other people.

The doctor came and sat by her. "I must see what
is the matter here," he said. "Why do you not get well,
Corydon.?"

He questioned her carefully and looked grave. "I
must have a consultation at once," he said.

Corydon's hand caught at his sleeve. "No, no!" she
whispered.

"Don't be afraid," said the doctor. "It won't hurt."

"It isn't that," said Corydon. She all but added, "I
must see Mr. Harding !"

She was wheeled into the operating-room, but this
time there was no interest in her eyes as she regarded
the smooth table and the shining instruments. As they

632 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

lifted her upon it, she shuddered. "Oh I cannot, I can-
not!" she wailed.

"There, there," said the doctor. "Be brave. We
wish simply to see what the matter is. It won't take
long."

And they put the cone to her mouth. Corydon
struggled and gasped, but it was no use, she was in the
clutches of the fiend again ; only this time there was no
ecstasy, and no vision of Mr. Harding. Instead there
was instant and sickening suffocation. Again she de-
scended into the uttermost depths of the inferno; and
it seemed as though this time the brave will was not
equal to the battle before it.

The surgeons made their examination, and they dis-
covered more diseased tissue, and a slowly spreading
infection. So there was nothing for it but to operate
again — they held a quick consultation, and then went
ahead. And afterwards they labored and sweated, and
by dint of persistent effort, and every device at their
command, they fanned into life once more the faint
spark in the ashen-grey form that lay before them. But
it was a feeble flame they got ; as Corydon's eyelids
fluttered, the only sign of recognition that came from
her lips was a moan, and from her eyes a look of dazed
stupidity. But there was hope for her life, the doctors
said ; and they sent a telegram which Thyrsis got three
days later, when he had fought his way to the town
through five miles of heavy snow-drifts.

Meantime the grim fight for life was going on. In
the morning Corydon opened her eyes to a burning
torture, the racked and twisted nerves quivering in re-
bellion. It did not come in twinges of pain, it was a
slow, deadening, persistent agony, that pervaded every
inch of her body. She wondered how she could bear

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 633

it, how she could live. And yet, strangely, inexplicably,
she wanted to live. She did not know why — she had
been outraged, she had been deserted by all, she was
but a feeble atom of determination in the centre of a
hostile universe. And yet she would pit her will against
them all, God, man, and devil; they should not con-
quer her, she would win out.

So she would clench her teeth together and fight.
For hours she would stare at the wall, the blank, un-
responsive, formless wall before her ; and then, when the
shadows of the evening fell, and they saw she was faint-
ing from exhaustion, they would come with the needle
of oblivion, and the dauntless soul would die for the
night, and return in the morning to its pitiless task.

§ 8. Thyrsis received a couple of letters at the
same time as the telegram, and he took the next train
for the city. It is said that a drowning man sees be-
fore him in a few moments the panorama of his whole
hfe; but to Thyrsis were given three hours in which to
recall the events of his love for Corydon. He had every
reason to believe that he would find her dying ; and such
pangs of suffering as came to him he had never known
before. He was in a crowded car, and he wouH not shed
a tear; but he sat, crouched in a heap and staring be-
fore him, fairly quivering with pent-up and concen-
trated grief. God, how he loved her! What a spirit
of pure flame she was — ^what a creature from another
sky! What martyrdom she had dared for him, and
how cruelly she had been punished for her daring ! And
now, this was the end; she was dying — perhaps dead!
How was he to live without her — in the bare and bar-
ren future that he saw stretching out before him ?

Flashes of meinory would come to him, waves of tor-

634 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

ment roll over him. He would recall her gestures, the
curves of her face, the tones of her voice, the songs that
she had sung; and then would come a choking in his
throat, and he would clench his hands, as a runner in

'■ the last moments of a desperate race. He thought of
her as he had seen her last. He had gone away, careless
and unthinking — how blind he had been ! The things
that he had not said to her, and that, he might have
said so easily! The love he had not uttered, the par-
dons he had not procured! The yearnings and con-
secrations that had remained unspoken all through their
lives — ah God, what a tragedy of impotence and failure
their lives had been !

Then before his soul came troops of memories, each
one a fiend with a whip of fire ; the words of anger that
he had spoken, the acts of cruelty that he had done!

, The times when he had made her weep, and had not

\ comforted her ! Oh, what a fool he had been — what
a blind and wanton fool ! And now — if he were to find
her dead, and never be able to tell her of his shame and
sorrow — he knew that he would carry the memories with
him all his days, they would be like blazing scars upon
his soul.

I She was still alive, however; and so he took a deep
breath, and went at his task. There was no question
now of what he could bear to do, but of what he must
do ; she must be saved, and who could do It but him-
self.'' Who else could take her hands and whisper to
her, and fill her with new courage and hope; who else
could bid her to live — to live; could rouse the fainting
spirit, and bid it rise up and set forth upon the agoniz-
ing journey.?

So out of the very abyss they came together. But
when at last the fight was won, when the doctors an-

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 635

nounced that she was out of danger, Thyrsis was fairly
reeling with exhaustion. When he left her in the after-
noon, he would go to his hotel-room and lie down, utterly
prostrated ; he would lie awake the whole night through,
wrestling with the demons of horror that he had
brought with him from her bedside.

So he realized that he was on the verge of collapse,
find that cost what it would, he must get away. Cory-
don's mother was with her, and when she was strong
enough to be moved, she would be taken back to the
farm. He mentioned this to Corydon, and she replied
that she would be satisfled. There would be Mr. Hard-
ing also, she said ; Mr. Harding wrote that he would
come up to the city, and do what he could to help her
in her dire distress.

§ 9. There came from the higher regions a pass
upon a steamer to Florida ; and so Thyrsis sailed away.
With a determined effort he took all his cares, and locked
them back in a far chamber of his mind. He would not
think about Corydon, nor about what he would do for
money when he came home; more important yet, he
would clear the book out of his thoughts — ^he would
not permit it to gnaw at him all day and all night.

And by these resolves he stood grimly. He walked
the deck for hours every day ; he watched the foaming
green waters, and the gulls wheeling in the sky, and the
sun setting over the sea, and the new moon showering
its fire upon the waves. Gradually the air grew warm,
and ice and snow became as an evil dream. A l&nd of
magic it seemed to which Thyrsis came — the beauty of
it enfolded him like a clasp of lave. He saw pine-
forests, and swamps with alligators in them, and live
oaks draped with trailing grey moss. The clumps of

636 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

palmettos fascinated him — he had seen pictures of such
trees in the tropics, and would hardly have been aston-
ished to see a herd of elephants in their shadows.

He found a beach, snow-white and hard, upon whieh
he walked for uncounted miles. He gathered strange
shells and crabs, and watched the turkey-buzzards on
the shore, and the slow procession of the pelicans, sail-
ing past above the tops of the breakers. He saw the
black fins of the grampuses cutting the water, and
thought that they were sharks. He stood for hours at
a time up to his waist in the surf, casting for sea-bass ;
he got few fish, but joy and excitement he got in
abundance.

Then, back upon the hammocks — to walk upon the
hard shell roads, and see orange and lemon-groves, and
gardens filled with roses and magnolias, and orchards of
mulberry and fig-trees. Truly this must have been the
land which the poet had described —

"Where every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile."

Thyrsis stayed in a humble boarding-house, but
nearby was one of the famous winter-resorts of the
Florida East Coast, and he was free to go there, and
wander about the lobbies and piazzas of the palatial
hotels, and watch the idle rich at their diversions. A
strange society they were — it seemed as if the scum of
the civilization of forty-five states had been blown into
this 6it of back-water. Here were society women,
jaded with dissipation; stock-brokers and financiers,
fleeing from the strain of the "Street" ; here were para-
sites of every species, who, having nothing to do at
home — or perhaps not even having any home — had come

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 637

to this land of warmth to prolong their orgies. They
raced over the roads and beaches in autos, and over the
water in swift motor-boats ; they dressed themselves
half a dozen times a day, they fed themselves upon rich
and costly foods, they gambled and gossiped and drank
and wantoned their time away. As he watched them it
was all that Thyrsis could do to keep himself from be-
ginning another manifesto for the "Appeal to Reason".
Oh, if only the toilers of the nation could be brought
here, and shown what became of the wealth they pro-
duced!

As if to complete his study of winter-resort manners
and morals, Thyrsis encountered a college acquaintance
whose father had become enormously rich through a
mining speculation, and was here with a party of
friends in a private-train. So he was whirled off in
one of half a dozen automobiles, and rode for a hundred
miles or so to an inland lake, and sat down to an al
fresco luncheon of such delicacies as pate de fois gras
and jellied grouse and champagne. Afterwards the
young -people wandered about and amused themselves,
and the elders played "bridge", in the face of all the
raptures of this wonderland of nature.

A strange and sombre figure Thyrsis must have
seemed to these people, with his brooding air and his
worn clothing; he rode home in an auto with half a
dozen youths and maidens, and while they flashed by
lakes and rivers that gleamed in the golden moon-light,
and by orchards and gardens from which the mingled
scents of millions of blossoms were wafted to them, these
voung people jested together and laughed and sang.

And Thyrsis lay back and watched them and studied
them. Their music was what is called "rag-time" —
they had apparently found nothing better to do with

638 LOVE'S PIEGRIMAGE

their lives than to learn hundreds of verses and melo-
dies, of which the subject-matter was the whims and
moods of the half-tamed African race — their vanities
and their barbarous impulses, and above all their hot
and lustful passions. Song after song they poured
forth, the substance of which was summed up in one
line that Thyrsis happened to carry away with him —

"Ah lubs you, mah honey, yes. Ah do !"

It seemed to him such a curious and striking commen-
tary upon the stage which leisure-class culture had
reached, in the course of its reversion to savagery.

§ 10. Thyesis came home after three weeks, browned
and refreshed, and ready to take up the struggle again.
He came with the cup of his love and sympathy over-
flowing; eager to see Corydon, and to tell her his ad-
ventures, and to share with her his store of new hope.

He found her reclining on the piazza of the farm-
house. The April buds were bursting upon the trees,
and the odor of spring was in the air; also, the flush
of health was stealing back into Corydon's cheeks.
How beautiful she looked, and how soft and gentle
was her caress, and what wistfulness and tenderness
were in the smile with which she greeted him!

There was the baby also, tumultuous and excited.
Thyrsis took him upon his knee, and while he fondled
him and played with him, he told Corydon about his
trip. But in a short while it became evident to him
that she had something on her mind; and finally she
sent the baby away to play, and began, "There is
something I have to tell you."

"Yes, dear.!"' he said.

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 639

"It is something very, very important."

"Yes?" he repeated.

"I — I don't know just how to begin," said Corydon,
"I hope you are not going to be angry."

"I can't imagine myself being angry just now," he
replied ; and then, struck by a sense of familiarity in
this introduction, he asked, with a smile, "You haven't
been seeing Harry Stuart, have you.""'

Corydon frowned at the words. "Don't speak of
that!" she said, quickly. "I am not joking."

He saw that she was agitated, and so he fell silent.

"I hesitated a long time about telling you," she went
on. "But you must know. I am sure it's right to tell
you."

"By all means, dearest," he answered.

"It's a long story," she said. "I must go back to
my first operation." And then she began, and told him
how she had found herself thinking of Mr. Harding,
and of the strange vision she had had ; she told of all her
fevered excitements, and of her confession to him.
When she finished she was trembling all over, and her
face and throat were flushed.

Thyrsis sat for a while in silence, looking very grave.
"I see," he said.

"You — you are not angry with me?" she asked.

"No, I'm not angry," he replied. "But tell me, what
has been going on since?"

"Well," said Corydon, "Mr. Harding has been com-
ing here to see me. He saw I needed help, and he
couldn't refuse it. It was — it was his duty to come."

"Yes," said the other. "Go on."

"Well, I think he had an idea that the whole thing
was a product of my sickness ; and when I was well
again, it would all be over."

640 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"And is it, Corydon?"

She sat staring in front of her ; her voice sank to a
whisper. "No," she said. "It — it isn't."

"And does he know that.?" asked Thyrsis.

"He knows everything," she replied. "I don't need
to tell him things."

"But have you talked about it with him.!"'

"A little," she said. "That is, you see, I had to ex-
plain to him — to apologize for what I had done in the
hospital. I wanted him to know that I wouldn't have
said anything to him, if I hadn't been so very ill."

"I see," said Thyrsis.

"And I want you to understand," added Corydon,
quickly — "you must not blame him. For he's the soul
of honor, Thyrsis ; and he can't help how he feels about
me — any more than I can help it. You must know
that, dear !"

"Yes, I know that."

"He's been so good and so noble about it. He thinks
so much of you, Thyrsis — ^he wouldn't do you wrong,
not by a single word. He said that to me — over and
over again. He's frightened, you know, that either of
us might do wrong. He's so sensitive — I think he
takes things more seriously than anybody we've ever
known."

"I understand," said Thyrsis; and then, after a
pause, he inquired, "But what's to come of it?"

"How do you mean?" she asked.

"What are you going to do?"

"Why, I don't know that there's anything to do,
Thyrsis. What would there be?"

"But are you going on being in love with him for-
ever ?"

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 641

"I — I don't see how I can tell, Thyrsis. Would it
do any harm?"

"It might grow on you," he said, with a slight smile.
"It sometimes does."

"Mr. Harding said we ought never to speak of it
again," said she. "And I guess he's right about that.
He said that our lives would always be richer, because
we had discovered each other's souls ; that it would
help us to grow into a nobler life."

"I see," said Thyrsis. "But it's a trifle disconcerting
at first. I'll need a little time to get used to it."

"Mr. Harding is very anxious to know you better,"
remarked Corydon. "But you see, he's afraid of you,
Thyrsis. You are so direct — you get to the point too
quickly for him."

"Um — ^yes," said he. "I can imagine that."

"And he thinks you distrust him," she went on —
"just because he's orthodox. But he's really not half
as backward as you think. His faith means a great
deal to him. I only wish I had such a faith in my own
life."

To which Thyrsis responded, "God knows, my dear,
I wish you had."

§ 11. The young clergyman came to call the next
afternoon, and the three sat upon the lawn and talked.
They talked about Florida, and then about Socialism
— as was inevitable, after Thyrsis had described the
population of the East Coast hotels. But he felt con-
strained and troubled — he did not know just how a man
should conduct himself with his wife's lover ; and so in
the end he excused himself and strolled off.

He came back as Mr. Harding was leaving; and it
seemed to him that the other's face wore a look of

642 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

pain and distress. Also, at supper he noted that Cory-
don was ill at ease.

"Something has gone wrong with your program?"
he inquired.

To which Corydon answered, "Mr. Harding thinks
he ought not to come any more."

"Not come any more?"

"He says I don't need him now. And he thinks —
he thinks it isn't right. He's afraid to come."

And so a week passed, and the young clergyman was
not seen again. Thyrsis noticed that his wife was silent
a great deal; and that when she did talk, she talked
about Mr. Harding. His heart ached to see her as she
was, so pitifully weak and appealing. She was scarcely
able to walk alone yet; and she complained also that
her mind had been weakened by the frightful ordeal
she had undergone. It exhausted her to do any think-
ing at all ; and she seemed to have forgotten nearly all
she knew — there were whole subjects upon which her
mind appeared to be a blank.

So he gave up trying to think about his book, and
went about all day pondering this new problem. It
was one of the laws of the marriage state that he must
suffer whenever she suffered. It was never permitted
to him to question the reality of any of her emotions ;
if they were real to her, they were real in the only
sense that counted ; and he must take them with the
entire tragic seriousness that she took them, he must re-
gard them as inevitable and fatal. For himself, he
could change or suppress emotions — that ability was
the most characteristic fact about him; but Corydon
could not do it, and so he was not permitted to do it.
That would be to manifest the "cold" and "stern" self.

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 643

which was to Corydon an object of abhorrence and
fear.

So now he went about all day, brooding over this
trouble. He would come to Corydon and see her gazing
across the valley with a melancholy look upon her
features ; he would see her, with her sweet face as if
suffused with unshed tears. And what was he to do
about it? Was he to rebuke her — ^however gently —
and urge her to suppress this yearning? To do that
would be to plunge her into abysses of grief. Or was
he to come to her, and utter his own love to her, and
draw her to him again ? He knew that he could do that
— he was conceited enough to believe that with his elo-
quence and his power of soul, he could have wiped Mr.
Harding clean out of her thoughts in a few days. But
then, when he had done it, he would have to go back to
the task of revolutionizing the world's critical stand-
ards; and what would become of Corydon after that?
What she needed, he told himself, was a love that was
not a will o' the wisp and a fraud, but a love that was
real and unceasing ; she needed the love of a man, and
not of an artist !

Here were two young people who were in love with
each other; and according to the specifications of the
moral code, they had their minds made up to sublime
renunciation. But then, Thyrsis had a moral code of
his own, and in it renunciation was not the only law
of life.

It was only when he thought of losing Corydon, that
he realized to the fuU how much he loved her. Then
all their consecrations and their pledges would come
back to him ; he would hold her as the greatest human
soul that he had ever met. But it was a strange para-
dox, that precisely the depth of his love for her made

644 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

him willing to think of losing her. He loved her for
herself, and not for anything she gave him ; he wanted
her to be happy, he wanted her to grow and achieve,
and in order to see her do this he would make any sacri-
fice in the world. In how many hours of insight had it
become clear to him that he himself could never make
her happy — that he was not the man to be her husband !
Now it seemed as if the time had come for him to prove
that he meant what he had said — rthat he was willing
to stand by his vision and to act upon it.

So after one day of especial unhappiness, he made
up his mind to a desperate resolve ; and at night, when
all the household was asleep, he went over to his lonely
study and sat down with a pen in his hand, and sum-
moned the spirit of Mr. Harding before him.

"I have concluded to write you a letter," he began.
"You will find it a startling and unusual one. I can
only beg you to believe that I have written it after much
hesitation, and that it represents most earnest and
prayerful thought upon my part.

"Since my return, I have become aware of the situ-
ation which has developed between yourself and my
wife. Her welfare is dearer to me than anything else
in the world; and after thinking it over, I concluded
that her welfare required that I should explain to you
the relationship which exists between us. It seems un-
likely that you could know about it otherwise, for it
is a very unusual relationship.

"I suppose there is no need for me to tell you that
Corydon is not happy. She never has been happy as
my wife, and I fear that she never will be. She is by^
nature warm-hearted, craving affection and companion-
ship. I, on the other hand, am by nature impersonal
and self-absorbed — I am compelled by the exigencies

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 645

of my work to be abstracted and indifferent to things
about me. I perceived this before our marriage, but
not clearly enough to save her; it has been her mis-
fortune that I have loved her so dearly that I have
been driven to attempt the impossible. I am continu-
ually deceiving myself into the belief that I am suc-
ceeding— and I am continually deceiving Corydon in
the same way. It has been our habit to talk things out
between us frankly; but this is a truth from which we
have shrunk instinctively. I have always seen it as the
seed of what must grow to be a bitter tragedy.

"The possibility that Corydon might come to love
some other man was one that I had not thought of —
it was very stupid of me, no doubt. But now it has
happened ; and I have worked over the problem with all
the faculties I possess. A man who was worthy of
Corydon's love would be very apt, under the circum-
stances, to feel that he must crush his impulses towards
her. But when we were married, it was with the agree-
ment that our marriage should be binding upon us only
so long as it was for the highest spiritual welfare of
both; and by that agreement it is necessary that we
should stand at all times. My purpose in writing to
you is to let you know that I have no claim upon Cory-
don which prohibits her from continuing her acquaint-
ance with you ; and that if in the course of time it
should become clear that Corydon would be happier as
your wife than as mine, I should regard it as my duty
to step aside. Having said this, I feel that I have done
my part. I leave the matter in your hands, with the
fullest confidence in your sincerity and good faith."

Thyrsis wrote this letter, and read it a couple of
times. Then he decided to sleep over it; and the next
morning he wakened, and read it again — ^with a shock

646 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

of surprise. He found it a startling letter. It opened
up vistas to his spirit; vistas of loneliness and grief —
and then again, vistas of freedom and triumph. If he
were to mail it, it would be irrevocable ; and it would
probably mean that he would lose Corydon. And covld
he make up his mind to lose her? His swift thoughts
flew to their parting; there were tears in his eyes^ —
his love came back to him, as it had when he thought
she was dying. But then again, there came a thrill of
exultation ; the captive lion within him smelt the air
of the jungle, and rattled his chains and roared.

Throughout breakfast he was absent-minded and ill
at ease; he bid Corydon a farewell which puzzled her
by its tenderness, and then started to walk to Bellevue
with the letter. Half way in, he stopped. No, he could
not do it — it was a piece of madness ; but then he started
again — ^he must do it. He found himself pacing up and
down before the post office, where for nearly an hour he
struggled to screw his courage to the sticking-point.
Once he started away, having made up his mind that he
would take another day to think the matter over ; but
after he had walked half a mile or so, he changed his
mind and strode back, and dropped the letter in the
box.

And then a pang smote him. It was done! All the
way as he walked home he had to fight with an impulse
to go back, and persuade the postmaster to return the
letter to him!

§ 12. Thyrsis figured that the fatal document
would reach Mr. Harding that afternoon ; and the next
morning in his anxiety he walked a mile or two to meet
the mail-carrier on his way. Sure enough, there was a

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 647

reply from the clergyman. He tore it open and read

it swiftly:

"I received your letter, and I hasten to answer. I
cannot tell you the distress of mind which it has caused
me. There has been a most dreadful misundertanding,
and I can only hope that it has not gone too far to be
corrected. I beg you to believe me that there has been
nothing between your wife and myself that could jus-
tify the inference you have drawn. Your wife was in
terrible distress of spirit, and I visited her and tried
to comfort her — such is my duty as a clergyman, as
I conceive it. I did nothing but what a clergyman
should properly do, and you have totally misunderstood
me, and also your wife, who is the most innocent and
gentle and trusting of souls. She is utterly devoted
to you, and the idea that the help I have tried to give
her should be the occasion of any misunderstanding
between you is dreadful for me to contemplate.

"I must implore you to believe this, and dismiss these
cruel suspicions from your mind. If I were to be the
cause of breaking up your home, and wrecking Cory-
don's life, it would be more than I could bear. I have
a most profound belief in the sanctity of the institution
of marriage, and not for anything in the world would
I have been led to do, or even to contemplate in my own
thoughts, anything which would trespass upon its obli-
gations. I repeat to you with all the earnestness of
which I am capable that your idea is without basis,
and I beg you to banish it from your mind. You may
rely upon it that I will not see your wife again, under
any circumstances imaginable."

Thyrsis read this, and then stared before him

6*8 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

with knitted brows. "Why, what's the matter with
the man?" he said to himself. And then he read the
letter over again, weighing its every phrase. "Did
he think my letter was sarcasm?" he wondered. "Did he
think I was angry?"

He went to his study and got the rough draft of his
own letter, and reread and pondered it. No, he con-
cluded, it was not possible that Mr. Harding had
thought he was angry. "He's trying to dodge!" he
exclaimed. "He can't bring himself to face the thing !"

But then again, he wondered. Could it be that the
man was right; could it be that Corydon had misun-
derstood him and his attitude? Or had he perhaps ex-
perienced a reaction, and was now trying to deny his
feelings ?

For several hours Thyrsis pondered the problem ; and
then he went and sat by her, as she was reading on the
piazza. "You haven't heard anything more from Mr.
Harding, have you?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Corydon.

"What do you suppose he intends to do?"

"I— I don't know," she said. "I don't think he
means to come back."

"But why not, dear?"

"He's afraid to trust himself, Thyrsis."

"You think he really cares for you, then?"

"Yes, dear."

"But, how can you be sure?" he asked.

At which Corydon smiled. "A woman has ways of
knowing about such things," she said.

"I wish you'd tell me about it," said he.

But after a little thought, she shook her head. "May-
be some day, but not now. It wouldn't be fair to him.

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 649

It isn't going any further, and that's enough for you
to know."

"He must be unhappy, isn't he?" said Thyrsis, art-
fully.

"Yes," she answered, "he's unhappy, I'm sure. He
takes things very seriously."

Thyrsis paused a moment. "Did he tell you that he
loved you?" he asked.

"No," said Corydon. "He — ^he wouldn't have per-
mitted himself to do that. That would have been
wrong."

"But then — ^what did he do?"

"He looked at me," she said.

"When he went off the other day — did he know how
you still felt?"

"Yes, Thyrsis; why do you ask?"

"I thought you might have been deceiving yourself."

At which she smiled and replied, "I wouldn't have
bothered to tell you in that case."

§ 13. So Thyrsis strolled away, and after duly con-
sidering the matter, he sat himself down to compose
another letter to the young clergyman.

"My dear Me. Harding:

"I read your note with a great deal of perplexity.
It is evident to me that I have not made the situation
clear to you ; you probably do not find it easy to
realize the frankness which Corydon and I maintain in
our relationship. I must tell you at the outset that
she has narrated to me what has passed between you,
and so I am not dealing with 'cruel suspicions', but
with facts. Can I not persuade you to do the same?

"It is difficult for me to be sure just what is in your

650 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

mind. But for one thing, let me make certain that you
are not trying to read anything between the lines of
what I write you. Please understand I am not angry,
or jealous, or suspicious; also, I am not unhappy — at
least not so unhappy but that I can stand it. I have
stood a good deal of unhappiness in my life, and Cory-
don has also.

"You tell me about your attitude towards my wife.
Of course it may be that as you come to look back
upon what has passed between you, it seems to you that
your feeling for her was not deep and permanent, and
that you would prefer not to continue your acquaint-
ance with her. That would be your right — you have
not pledged yourself in any way. All that I desire
is, that in considering the state of your feelings, you
should deal with them, and not with any duty which
you may imagine you owe to me. I have no claim in
the matter, and any that I might have, I forego.
' "The crux of the whole difficulty I imagine must lie
5n what you say about your 'profound belief in the
sanctity of the institution of marriage'. That is, of
course, a large question to attempt to discuss in a let-
ter. I can only say that I once had such a belief, and
that as a result of my studies I have it no longer. I
see the institution of marriage as a product of a cer-
tain phase of the economic development of the race,
which phase is rapidly passing, if it be not already past.
And the institution to me seenis to share in the evils
of the economic phase; indeed I am accustomed, when
invited to discuss the institution of marriage, to insist
upon discussing what actually exists — which is the in-
stitution of marriage-plus-prostitution.

"Our economic system aflFords to certain small classes
of men — to capitalists, to merchants, to lawyers, to

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 651

clergymen — opportunities of comfort and dignity and
knowledge and health and virtue. But to certain other
classes, and far larger classes — to miners, to steel-
workers, to garment-makers — it deals out misery and
squalor and ignorance and disease and vice. And in the
case of women it does exactly the same ; to some it gives
a sheltered home, with comfort and beauty and peace;
while to others it gives a life of loneliness and sterility,
and to others a life of domestic slavery, and to yet
others only the horrors of the brothel. And when you
come to investigate, you find that the difference is every-
where one of economic advantage. The merchant, the
lawyer, the clergyman, has education and privilege, he
can wait and make his terms ; but the miner, the steel-
worker, the sweat-shop-toiler, has to sell his labor for
what will keep him alive that day. And in the same
way with women — some can acquire accomplishments,
virtues, charms; and when it comes to giving their
love, they can secure the life-contract which we call
marriage. But the daughter of the slums has no op-
portunity to acquire such accomplishments and virtues
and charms, and often she cannot hold out for such a
bargain — she sells her love for the food and shelter that
she needs to keep her alive,

"This will seem radical doctrine to you, I suppose;
I have noticed that you take our institutions at their
face-value, and do not ask how much in them may be
sham. But it seems to me there is no need to go into
that matter here, for no trespass upon the marriage
obligation is proposed. The conventions undoubtedly
give me the right to be outraged because my wife is in
love with another man; I can denounce him, and hu-
miliate her. But if I am willing to forego this right,
if I do not care to play Othello to her Desdemona,

652 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

what then? Who can claim to be injured by my re-
nunciation ?

"Of course I know it is said that marriages are
made in Heaven, and that what God hath joined to-
gether, no man may put asunder. But it is difficult
for me to imagine that an intelligent man would take
this attitude at the present day. If I were dead, you
would surely recognize that Corydon might remarry ;
you would recognize it, I presume, if I were hopelessly
insane, or degenerate. What if I were in the habit of
getting drunk and maltreating her — ^would you claim
that she was condemned to suffer this for life.? Or
suppose that I were found to be physically impotent.''
And can you not recognize the fact that there might
be impotence of an intellectual and spiritual sort, which
could leave a woman quite as unhappy, and make her
life quite as barren and futile.''

"Let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that
I have stated correctly the facts between Corydon and
myself; that there exists between us a fundamental dif-
ference in temperament, which makes it certain that,
however much we might respect and admire, and even
love each other, we could never either of us be happy
as man and wife ; and suppose that Corydon were to
meet some other man, with whom she could live har-
moniously; and that she loved him sincerely, and he
loved her; and that I were to recognize this, and be
willing that she should leave me — do you mean that
you would maintain that such a course was wrong.?
And if it were, with whom would the blame he? With
her, because she did not condemn herself to a lifetime
of failure.? Or with me, because I did not desire her
to do this — because I did not wish to waste my life-
force in trying to content a discontented woman.?

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 653

"I might add that I have said nothing to Corydon
about having written to you; she has no idea that I
have thought of such a thing, and she would be horri-
fied at the suggestion. I have taken the responsibility
of doing it, realizing that there was no other way in
wliich you could be made acquainted with the true situ-
ation. There is much more that I could say about all
tills, but it seems a waste of time to write it. Can we
not meet sometime, and get at each other's point of
view.? I am going to be in town the day after to-mor-
row, and unless I hear from you to the contrary, I
will drop in to see you some time in the morning."

§ 14. Thtrsis read this letter over two or three
times ; and then, resisting the impulse to elaborate his
exposition of the economic bases of the marriage in-
stitution, he took it in to town and mailed it. He
waited eagerly for a reply the next day ; but no reply
came.

The morning after that, he walked down to town as
he had agreed to, and called at Mr. Harding's home.
The door was opened by his housekeeper, Delia Gor-
don's aunt. "Is Mr. Harding in?" asked Thyrsis.

"He's gone up to the city," was the reply.

"To the city," said Thyrsis. "When did he go?"

"He left this morning."

"And when will he be back?"

"I don't know. He left rather suddenly, and he
didn't say."

"I see," said Thyrsis. "Tell him I called, please."

And so he went home and mailed another note to
Mr. Harding, asking him to make an appointment for
a meeting; after which he waited for three or four
days — but still there came no reply.

654 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"Have you heard anything more from Mr. Hard-
ing?" he asked of Corydon, finally.

"No, dear," she answered. "I don't expect to hear."
But he saw that she was nervous and distrait; and he
knew by her unwonted interest in the mail that she
was all the time hoping to get some word from him.

When it came to handling any affair with Corydon,
Thyrsis was a poor diplomatist. He would tell himself
that this or that should be kept from her for the
present ; but the secrecy always irked him — his impulse
was to talk things out with her, to go hand in hand
with her to face the facts of their life. So now, in
this case; one afternoon he settled her comfortably in
a hammock, and sat beside her and took her hand.

"Corydon," he said, "I've something I want to tell
you. I've been having a correspondence with Mr.
Harding."

She started, and stared at him wildly. "What do
you mean.""' she gasped.

"I wrote him two letters," said he.

"What about.?"

"I wanted to explain about us," he said; and then
he told her what he had put in the first letter, and read
Mr. Harding's reply, which he had in his pocket.

"What do you make of it?" he asked.

"Tell me what your answer was !" cried Corydon,
quickly; and so he began to outline his second letter.

But she did not let him get very far. "You wrote
him that way about marriage!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, dear," said he.

"But, Thyrsis ! He'll be perfectly horrified !"

"You think so?"

"Why, Thyrsis! Don't you understand? He's a
clergyman !"

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 655

"I know ; but it's the truth "

"You don't know anything about people at all !"
she cried. "Can't you realize? He doesn't reason about
things like you ; you can't appeal to him in that way !"

"Well, what was I to do "

"We'll never see him again !" exclaimed Corydon, in
despair.

"That won't be any worse than it was before, will
it?"

"Tell me," she rushed on, in her agitation. "Did
you tell him that I had no idea what you were doing?"

"Of course I told him that."

"But did you make it perfectly clear to him?"

"I tried to, dear."

"Tell me what you said! Tell me the rest of the
letter."

And so he recited it, as well as he could, while she
listened, breathless with dismay. "How could you !"
she cried.

Then she read over Mr. Harding's letter once more.
"You see," she said; "he was simply dazed. He didn't
know what to say, he didn't know what to think."

"He'll get over it in time. He had to know, some-
how."

"But why did he have to know? Why couldn't
things have stayed as they were?"

"But my dear, you are in love with the man, aren't
you?"

"But I don't want to marry him, Thyrsis! I don't
— I don't love him enough."

"You might have come to it in the course of time,"
he replied.

"Don't you see that he'd have to give up being a
clergyman?" she exclaimed.

656 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"That's been done before," he said.

"But — see it from his point of view ! Think of the
scandal !"

"I don't think much about scandals," Thyrsis an-
swered. "That part could be arranged."

"But do the laws give people divorces in that way?"

"Our divorce laws are relics of feudalism," he an-
swered. "One does not take them seriously."

"But how can you get around them, Thyrsis.'"'

"You simply have to admit whatever offense they
require."

"But Thyrsis! Think how that would seem to Mr.
Harding!"

"My dear," he answered, "if I knew that a divorce
was necessary to your happiness, I would take upon
myself whatever disgrace was necessary."

Corydon sat gazing at him. "Is it so easy to give
me up.'"' she asked.

"It wasn't easy at all, my dear," he answered. "It
was a fight that I fought out."

"But you decided that you could do it!" she ex-
claimed ; and that, he found, was the aspect of the
matter that stayed with her in the end. It seemed a
poor sort of compliment he had paid her; and how
could he make real to her the pangs the decision had
cost him.-" He expected her to take that for granted
— in all these years, had he not been able to convince
her of his love?

It was the old story between them, he reflected; he
was always being called upon to express his feelings,
and always reluctant to attempt it. Just now she
wanted him to enter upon an eloquent exposition of how
he had suffered and hesitated before he mailed the let-
ter; and she would hang upon his words, and drink

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 657

them in greedily — and of course, the more convincing
he made them, the more she would love hvm.

She could never leave him, she insisted — the idea of
giving him up was madness. She had not meant any
such thing by falling in love with Mr. Harding. Why
must he be so elemental, so brutally direct? He was
like some .clumsy animal, blundering about in the gar-
den where she kept her sentimental plants. He fright-
ened her, as he had frightened Mr. Harding. She
stood appalled at this thing which he had done ; the
truth being that his action had sprung from a certain
deep conviction in him, which he never found courage
to utter to her.

§ 15. Thyrsis pledged his word that he would write
no more to Mr. Harding; and so they settled down to
wait for a reply. But a couple more days passed, and
still there came nothing.

Corydon was restless and impatient. "What cam, he
be doing.'" she exclaimed. Finally it chanced that
Thyrsis had to go to Bellevue upon some errand; and
so the two drove into town together, and came upon
the solution of the mystery.

On the street they met Mr. Jennings, the high-school
principal.

"Good-morning," said he. "A fine day." And then,
"Have you heard the news about Harding.''"

"What news?" asked Thyrsis.

"He's gone away."

"Gone away !"

"He's resigned his pastorate."

Thyrsis stared at the man, dazed; he felt Corydon
beside him give a start. "Resigned his pastorate !" she
echoed.

658 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"Yes," said the other, "just so."

"But why?"

"We none of us know. We're at our wits' end."

"But — how did you hear it?"

"I'm one of the trustees of the church, and his
letter was read last night."

Thyrsis could not find a word to utter.. He sat
staring at the man in bewilderment.

"What did he say?" cried Corydon, at last.

"He said that for some time he had been dissatisfied
with his work, and felt the need of more study and re-
flection. It quite took our breath away, for nobody'd
had the least idea that anything was wrong."

"But what's he going to do?"

"Apparently he's going abroad," was the answer —
"at least he ordered his mail to be forwarded to an ad-
dress in Switzerland. And that's all we know."

Then, after a few remarks about the spiritual fer-
ment in the churches, the worthy high-school principal
went on his way, and left Corydon and Thyrsis in the
middle of the street. For a minute or two they sat
staring before them as if in a trance; and then sud-
denly from Thyrsis' lips there burst a peal of wild
laughter. "By the Lord God, he ran away from it !"
he cried; and he seized Corydon by the arm and cried
again, "He ran away from it !"

"Thyrsis !" exclaimed the other. "Don't laugh about
it!"

"Don't laugh !' he gasped ; and again the convulsion
of hilarity swept over him.

But Corydon turned upon him swiftly. "No!" she
cried. "Stop! It's no joke!"

She was staring at him, her eyes wide with consterna-

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 659

tion and dismay. "Think!" she exclaimed. "He's
given up his career !"

"Yes," he said, "so it seems."

"It's awful!" she cried. "Oh, how coidd he!"

He saw the way the news affected her, and he made
an effort to control himself. "The man simply couldn't
face it," he said. "He didn't dare to trust himself.
He ran."

"But Thyrsis !" she exclaimed. "I can't believe it !
He's given up his whole life-work!"

"He's fled like Joseph," said Thyrsis — "leaving his
cloak in the hands of the temptress !"

And then, the strain proving too much for him, he
began to laugh again. Becoming aware of the stares
of some people on the street, he started up the horse,
and drove on into the country, where he could be alone,
and could give unrestrained expression to the emotions
that possessed him.

He imagined the dismay and perplexity of the un-
happy clergyman, with his belief in the sacred institu-
tion of marriage — and with the vision of Corydon pur-
suing him all day, and haunting his dreams at night.
He imagined him trying to face the interview with the
husband — with the terrible, conventionless husband,
whose arguments could not be answered. "He simply
couldn't face me! He went the very morning I was
coming !"

So he would laugh again; he would laugh until he
was so weak that he had to lie back in his seat. "I can't
believe that it's true !" he exclaimed. "My dear, I think
it's the funniest thing that ever happened since the
world began !"

"But Thyrsis!" she protested. "Think what we've
done to him! The man's life is wrecked!"

660 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

"Nonsense !" said he. "It's the best thing that could
have happened to him. He might have gone on preach-
ing sermons all his life — but now he's got some ideas
to work out. He'll have time to read books, and to
ihink."

"But he must be suffering so!" exclaimed Corydon,
who could not forget her love, even in the presence of
his ribaldry.

"He needs to suffer," Thyrsis replied. "He may
meet some of the radicals over there, and come back with
a new point of view."

But Corydon shook her head. "You don't know
him," she said. "He couldn't possibly change. I don't
think I'll ever hear from him again."

Thyrsis looked at her and saw that there were tears
in her eyes. He put his hand upon hers. "We'll have
to worry through for a while longer, dear," he said.
^'Never mind — we'll manage to make out somehow !"

§ 16. They drove home ; and all through supper
ihey talked about this breathless event. Afterwards
they sat in the twilight, upon the porch, and threshed
it out in its every aspect.

"Corydon," said he, "I don't believe you really loved
him as much as you thought. Did you.'"'

She stared before her without answering.

"Would you have loved him for long.?" he persisted.

She pondered over this. "I don't think one could
love a man always," she answered, "unless he had a
mind."

At which he pondered in turn. "Then it was too bad
to drive him away!"

"That's just it," said she. "That's what I couldn't
make clear to you."

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM 661

"But still, we had to find out."
"You may have," she said. "I didn't."
Thyrsis looked, and saw that she was smiling through
her tears. He took her hand in his. "We'll see each
other through, dear," he said. "We'll have to wait
until the world grows up."

He felt an answering pressure of her hand. "Thyr-
sis," she said, "you must promise me that you will
never do anything dreadful like that again. You must
understand me; I might think that I was in love, but
it would never be real — truly it wouldn't. No man
could ever mean to me what you mean — I know that !
And I couldn't give you up — you must never let your-
self think of such a thing ! I couldn't give you up !"
So there came to Thyrsis one of those bursts of
tenderness that she knew so well. He put his arms
about her and kissed her with fervor ; but even while
he spoke with her, and gave her the love she desired,
there was something in him that sank back and moaned
with despair. So the captive sinks and moans when he
finds that his break for freedom has led only to the
tightening of his chains.

They stood for the last time before the cabm, bidding
farewell to the little glen and all its memories.

"There are lines in the poem for everything," she
said. "Even for that!" And she quoted —

"He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown!"

He laughed. "I can do better yet," he said —

"Alack, for Corydon no rival now!"

There was a pause. "That was five years," she
mused. "And there were five more!"

"It will mean another book," he said. "To tell about
the new work; and how Thyrsis became a social lion;
and how, like Icarus, he fletv too high and melted his
wings. And then, 'The Exploiters,^ the book of his
vengeance! And then Corydon "

"Yes, do not forget Corydon," she said.

"How he watched her dying before his eyes, and
how he prayed for months for courage to kill her, and
could not, but ran away. And then "

"It will make a long story."

"Yes — a long story. 'Love's Deliverance,'' let us
call it."

"They will smile at that. It sounds like Reno,
Nevada."

" 'Love's Deliverance,' even so," he said. "To tell
662

LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE 663

hole Thyrsis went out into the wilderriess and found
himself; and of the new love that came to Corydon."

"It will he a Bible for lovers " said she.

"Yes," he replied, and smiled — "with a book of
Chronicles, and a book of Proverbs, and a book of
Psalms, and a book of Revelations "

"And several books of Epistles," she interposed.

"The tablets in the temple are cracked," he said,
"and the fortresses of privilege are crumbling. When
the Revolution is here — zehen there are no longer
priests nor judges nor class-taboos — then out of the
hunger of our own hearts we shall have to shape our
sex-ideals, and organize our new aristocracies."

"They will call it a book of 'free love'," said she.

To which he answered, gravely: "Let us redeem our
great words from base uses. Let that no longer call
itself Love, which knows that it is not free!"

Kft ^* 'M

^^2$^^*.^''